Lynis 3.0.0 - Security Auditing Tool For Unix/Linux Systems - Hacking Land

We are excited to announce this major release of auditing tool Lynis. Several big changes have been made to core functions of Lynis. These changes are the next of simplification improvements we made. There is a risk of breaking your existing configuration.

Lynis is an open source security auditing tool. Used by system administrators, security professionals, and auditors, to evaluate the security defenses of their Linux and UNIX-based systems. It runs on the host itself, so it performs more extensive security scans than vulnerability scanners.

Supported operating systems

The tool has almost no dependencies, therefore it runs on almost all Unix-based systems and versions, including:

AIX
FreeBSD
HP-UX
Linux
Mac OS
NetBSD
OpenBSD
Solaris
and others

It even runs on systems like the Raspberry Pi and several storage devices!

Installation optional

Lynis is light-weight and easy to use. Installation is optional: just copy it to a system, and use "./lynis audit system" to start the security scan. It is written in shell script and released as open source software (GPL).

How it works

Lynis performs hundreds of individual tests, to determine the security state of the system. The security scan itself consists of performing a set of steps, from initialization the program, up to the report.

Steps

Determine operating system
Search for available tools and utilities
Check for Lynis update
Run tests from enabled plugins
Run security tests per category
Report status of security scan

Besides the data displayed on the screen, all technical details about the scan are stored in a log file. Any findings (warnings, suggestions, data collection) are stored in a report file.

Opportunistic Scanning

Lynis scanning is opportunistic: it uses what it can find.

For example, if it sees you are running Apache, it will perform an initial round of Apache related tests. When during the Apache scan it also discovers an SSL/TLS configuration, it will perform additional auditing steps on that. While doing that, it then will collect discovered certificates so they can be scanned later as well.

In-depth security scans

By performing opportunistic scanning, the tool can run with almost no dependencies. The more it finds, the deeper the audit will be. In other words, Lynis will always perform scans which are customized to your system. No audit will be the same!

Use cases

Since Lynis is flexible, it is used for several different purposes. Typical use cases for Lynis include:

Security auditing
Compliance testing (e.g. PCI, HIPAA, SOx)
Vulnerability detection and scanning
System hardening

Resources used for testing

Many other tools use the same data files for performing tests. Since Lynis is not limited to a few common Linux distributions, it uses tests from standards and many custom ones not found in any other tool.

Best practices
CIS
NIST
NSA
OpenSCAP data
Vendor guides and recommendations (e.g. Debian Gentoo, Red Hat)

Lynis Plugins

Plugins enable the tool to perform additional tests. They can be seen as an extension (or add-on) to Lynis, enhancing its functionality. One example is the compliance checking plugin, which performs specific tests only applicable to some standard.

Changelog

Upgrade note

## Lynis 3.0.0 (2020-06-18)
 
 This is a major release of Lynis and includes several big changes.
 Some of these changes may break your current usage of the tool, so test before
 deployment!
 
 ### Security issues
 This release resolves two security issues
 * CVE-2020-13882 - Discovered by Sander Bos, code submission by Katarina Durechova
 * CVE-2019-13033 - Discovered by Sander Bos
 
 ### Breaking change: Non-interactive by default
 Lynis now runs non-interactive by default, to be more in line with the Unix
 philosophy. So the previously used '--quick' option is now default, and the tool
 will only wait when using the '--wait' option.
 
 ### Breaking change: Deprecated options
 - Option: -c
 - Option: --check-update/--info
 - Option: --dump-options
 - Option: --license-key
 
 ### Breaking change: Profile options
 The format of all profile options are converted (from key:value to key=value).
 You may have to update the changes you made in your custom.prf.
 
 ### Security
 An important focus area for this release is on security. We added several
 measures to further tighten any possible misuse.
 
 ## New: DevOps, Forensics, and pentesting mode
 This release adds initial support to allow defining a specialized type of audit.
 Using the relevant options, the scan will change base on the intended goal.
 
 See full changelog on GitHub page.