A new employee joins the development team and needs to access a shared repository directory. The directory is owned by the 'devs' group. The administrator wants to ensure the employee can read and write files in that directory, but should not be able to modify the directory's permissions or ownership. Which set of commands should the administrator run?

usermod -aG devs employee && chmod 2770 /shared/repo

usermod -G devs employee && chmod 777 /shared/repo

chown employee:devs /shared/repo && chmod 770 /shared/repo

useradd -G devs employee && chmod 2770 /shared/repo

A system administrator is troubleshooting a Linux server that is running out of memory. A specific user's processes are consuming excessive memory and causing system instability. The administrator wants to limit the memory usage for that user's processes without affecting other users. Which approach should the administrator take?

Add the user to the 'nogroup' group

Set a ulimit -v limit in the user's shell configuration file

Change the user's shell to a restricted shell

Use the 'kill' command to terminate the user's processes when memory is low

A Linux server is exposed to the internet and runs an SSH service. The security team wants to reduce the attack surface while maintaining remote administration capability. Which SSH configuration change is the most effective first step?

Set PermitRootLogin no and PasswordAuthentication no, and use key-based authentication for all users

Enable TCP wrappers in /etc/hosts.deny to block all hosts except the admin's IP

Set AllowUsers to only the administrator's username

Change the SSH port from 22 to a non-standard port such as 2222

A Linux administrator is responsible for a fleet of Ubuntu servers. The administrator wants to ensure that all servers have the latest security patches applied automatically, but also wants to verify the integrity of the packages before installation. Which approach best meets these requirements?

Configure unattended-upgrades to install security updates automatically and rely on the default APT repository GPG signature verification.

Manually download .deb packages from the internet and install them with dpkg -i, checking checksums manually.

Disable automatic updates and run 'apt-get update && apt-get upgrade' once a month.

Use 'apt-get download' to fetch packages and then 'sha256sum' to verify them before installing with dpkg.

A Linux administrator needs to allow a backup script to run with root privileges, but only the script itself should be able to run with those privileges. The script is located at /usr/local/sbin/backup.sh and is owned by root. Which configuration best achieves this?

Add a sudoers entry: admin ALL=(root) NOPASSWD: /usr/local/sbin/backup.sh

Set the setuid bit on the script with chmod 4755 /usr/local/sbin/backup.sh

Create a cron job that runs the script as root every minute

Add the admin user to the sudoers file with the entry: admin ALL=(ALL) ALL

GIAC Security Essentials

Domain 4Objective 4

Linux Security and Hardening GSEC Practice Questions (Page 3)

Part of the Endpoint and Platform Security domain, which makes up ~32% of our current practice bank. GIAC (SANS) does not publish an official question count, but from its 240-minute exam (~95–160 total, ~30–51 in this domain), expect 3–6 from this objective — we provide 37 practice questions to prepare you well beyond it. (estimate)

37questions here

8free pages

10concepts

Questions 11–15

11application · medium
A new employee joins the development team and needs to access a shared repository directory. The directory is owned by the 'devs' group. The administrator wants to ensure the employee can read and write files in that directory, but should not be able to modify the directory's permissions or ownership. Which set of commands should the administrator run?
Select an answer first
12application · medium
A system administrator is troubleshooting a Linux server that is running out of memory. A specific user's processes are consuming excessive memory and causing system instability. The administrator wants to limit the memory usage for that user's processes without affecting other users. Which approach should the administrator take?
Select an answer first
13application · medium
A Linux server is exposed to the internet and runs an SSH service. The security team wants to reduce the attack surface while maintaining remote administration capability. Which SSH configuration change is the most effective first step?
Select an answer first
14application · medium
A Linux administrator is responsible for a fleet of Ubuntu servers. The administrator wants to ensure that all servers have the latest security patches applied automatically, but also wants to verify the integrity of the packages before installation. Which approach best meets these requirements?
Select an answer first
15application · medium
A Linux administrator needs to allow a backup script to run with root privileges, but only the script itself should be able to run with those privileges. The script is located at /usr/local/sbin/backup.sh and is owned by root. Which configuration best achieves this?
Select an answer first

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Linux Security and Hardening GSEC Practice Questions (Page 3)

Questions 11–15

A Linux server is exposed to the internet and runs an SSH service. The security team wants to reduce the attack surface while maintaining remote administration capability. Which SSH configuration change is the most effective first step?

A Linux administrator is responsible for a fleet of Ubuntu servers. The administrator wants to ensure that all servers have the latest security patches applied automatically, but also wants to verify the integrity of the packages before installation. Which approach best meets these requirements?

A Linux administrator needs to allow a backup script to run with root privileges, but only the script itself should be able to run with those privileges. The script is located at /usr/local/sbin/backup.sh and is owned by root. Which configuration best achieves this?

Keep studying — Endpoint and Platform Security