this post was submitted on 10 Feb 2025
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    I didn't know you were supposed to disable root user... (linux.community)
    submitted 1 week ago by [email protected] to c/linuxmemes
    177 comments fedilink hide all child comments
     

    Background: 15 years of experience in software and apparently spoiled because it was already set up correctly.

    Been practicing doing my own servers, published a test site and 24 hours later, root was compromised.

    Rolled back to the backup before I made it public and now I have a security checklist.

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    [–] DavidGA 13 points 1 week ago (2 children)

    It should be a serious red flag that your VPS host is generating root passwords simple enough to get quickly hacked.

    [–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago

    I'm pretty sure they assumed if you bought their service, you have the competency to properly set it up.

    And I proved them wrong.

    [–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

    It should be a red flag if the root account has a password at all. Shouldn't be able to access it without sudo (or in extreme cases, after a single-user boot).

    Also, I thought SSH root login was disabled by default. Has been in all Debian and RedHat variants I've ever used...

    [–] DavidGA 1 points 1 week ago

    If you install Debian yourself, it asks you to set a root password. If you don't provide one, it disables root and enables sudo.

    Of course, if you're running Debian provided by a cloud provider, it's however they set it up for you.