This is an excerpt from a Hacker News comment by user robomartin on hardening a 12.04LTS ubuntu install, related to the article "My First 5 Minutes On A Server; Or, Essential Security for Linux Servers" (link to comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5319289 ). I'm putting this here as I'd like to evaluate the list when I get a chance.

gistfile1.txt

How about it guys? Would you care to attempt to produce a canonical HN "How to harden your server" reference?
Maybe one of the security experts on HN can start a repository on Github to evolve a canonical script. I'm pretty much 100% Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, so it is my hope that this is one of the platforms that is addressed.

I did some looking around and this is what I found (I am in no position to evaluate the merits of any of these at anything
beyond an intermediate level):

https://github.com/bluedragonz/server-shield
https://github.com/eglimi/linux_hardening
http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/linux-security.html
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1002167
http://www.thefanclub.co.za/how-to/how-secure-ubuntu-1204-lt...
http://www.andrewault.net/2010/05/17/securing-an-ubuntu-serv...
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1919111
https://help.ubuntu.com/12.04/serverguide/security.html
http://www.sans.org/score/checklists/linuxchecklist.pdf
http://nvd.nist.gov/scap/content/stylesheet/scap-rhel5-docum...
http://blogs.csoonline.com/ubuntu_lts_vulnerability_scrub_ag...
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=510812