Hardening a Samba server

Disable NetBIOS

Add the following line to the [global] section of smb.conf

# Disable Netbios
disable netbios = yes

Allow minimum SMB3 protocol

Add the following line to the [global] section of smb.conf - If you experience problems with older clients not being able to connect, comment out this one.

# Enforce minimum protolo SMB3
server min protocol = SMB3

Configuring the firewall for the Samba server

Install UFW

apt-get update && apt-get install ufw

If you disabled IPv6 when when you prepared your Debian server for Samba, then disable IPv6 in UFW:

Edit /etc/dafault/ufw, and set

IPV6=no

We assume there is only one network card in the server. Please be careful enabling the firewall on a system . I assume we only need Samba. If you need more services check your requirements first !

Check what ports are open and listening in your system (example for a member server):

netstat -plaunt | egrep "ntp|chro|bind|named|samba|?mbd"| grep -v "ESTABLISHED"
tcp        0      0 0.0.0.0:445             0.0.0.0:*               LISTEN      1174/smbd                   
tcp        0      0 0.0.0.0:139             0.0.0.0:*               LISTEN      1174/smbd

[...]

Create Samba AD DC and Member Server app configurations for UFW:

For an DC create /etc/ufw/applications.d/samba-ad-dc

The ports line can specify multiple ports, with /udp or /tcp, to limit the protocol, otherwise it defaults to both. For port ranges use “:”

[samba-ad-dc]
title=Samba-AD-DC
description=Samba 4 as domain controller
# With netbios enabled, add ports "137/udp|138/udp|139/tcp"
ports=53|88|123/udp|135/tcp|389|445/tcp|464|636/tcp|3268/tcp|3269/tcp|49152:65535/tcp

For a Member Server, create /etc/ufw/applications.d/samba-member

[samba-member]
title=Samba-Member
description=Samba 4 as Member Server
# With netbios enabled, add port "137/udp|138/udp|139/tcp"
# On a Print Server you may want to add CUPS interface port "631/tcp"
ports=445/tcp

Check your config files are valid:

ufw app list | grep samba
samba-ad-dc
samba-member

Enabling UFW on the server

This is what works for me. If you have more services running on your server, you will need to add more configuration lines. This is beyond the scope of this article.

# Allow "SSH" instead of "OpenSSH"
ufw allow from 192.168.0.0/24 to any 22 proto tcp
ufw allow from 192.168.0.0/24 to any app samba-ad-dc
ufw enable
# Some versions of Debian call the following app "SSH" instead of "OpenSSH"
ufw allow from 192.168.0.0/24 to any 22 proto tcp
ufw allow from 192.168.0.0/24 to any app samba-member
ufw enable

Delete ufw entries

Let's see your rules numbered first:

ufw status numbered

Choose the rule number (x) you need to remove, and then:

ufw delete x

How to check your firewall logs

This is only an example, there are many much more powerful tools for the job. We will use fwlogwatch.

apt-get update && apt-get install fwlogwatch
#verbose = no
verbose = yes

#resolve_hosts = no
resolve_services = yes

src_ip = on
dst_ip = on
protocol = on
#src_port = off
dst_port = on
tcp_opts = on
journalctl --since=yesterday -k -p4 -b -0 | /usr/sbin/fwlogwatch - -c /etc/fwlogwatch/fwlogwatch.config -m10

This script will analyze all firewall logs since yesterday on the current boot.

# Check Firewall logs
0 7 * * * journalctl --since=yesterday -k -p4 -b -0 | fwlogwatch - -c /etc/fwlogwatch/fwlogwatch.config -m10

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