[Techtalk] msec what is it, and why is it in an hourly cron?

[Mandi]

On Tue, 5 Nov 2002, Linda Mayhugh wrote:

> It's Mandrake's security program. It makes sure the default security
> settings are what it thinks they ought to be and will override any
> changes you've made manually. That's why you see it changing permissions
> levels and such. The main script the hourly cron calls is
> /usr/share/msec.py.
>
> When the system was first installed a security level was chosen, and the
> parameters for each of the levels are in that config file. You can
> easily tweak the msec.py file to do whatever you actually want it to do
> rather than what Mandrake set it for.
>
> Linda M

Mandrake's discussion of what msec is doing is here:

http://www.mandrakesecure.net/en/docs/msec.php

It helps set security defaults, and also runs periodically, looking for
changes and questionable files (like things that are world-writable that
maybe shouldn't be).

--mandi