Operating Systems/Linux/Ubuntu/Ubuntu 16.04 LTS/Services

What are Services?

Services are background programs that are ran in order to make sure the computer functions properly. Services also allow for the automation of critical processes, such as network communication, data storage, system maintenance, bluetooth, and printing. Services are usually launched at startup by the "Systemd" process, which is the first process to run on Linux. Services can also be managed and controlled using Systemd, or init scripts. While services are useful, they are another attack vector same as anything else, so they should be disabled when not required just as you would any other program.

Why interact with services?

Services are the building blocks of Linux, and in order to do anything on the operating system, you will need to interact with a service.

How to Interact with Services

See what is running, enabling, and disabling any service.

GUI

1. You're out of luck, not visual based service manager in 16.04

CLI

1. Open the terminal, run sudo bash
2. Run service --status-all to view a full list of installed services
3. Start a service with service <name of service> start
4. Stop a service with service <name of service> stop
5. Install services with apt-get install <name of service>
6. Remove services with apt-get remove <name of service> (you may have to confirm it)
7. See which services are running with systemctl --type=service --state=running

Known "bad" Services

(Unless one of these is specifically allowed in the README. For example webservers use apache2 or nginx)

• pure-ftpd
• Samba
• apache2
• nginx

Known "bad" Applications

• wireshark
• ophcrack