The Story Behind the Linux Security Quick Reference Guide
1 - 2 min read
Aug 09, 2022
A memoir written by Dave Wreski, Guardian Digital CEO, Founder of LinuxSecurity.com and author of the Linux Security Quick Reference Guide and Linux Security HOWTO.
It was in 2000, at a time when the whole dot-com thing was going on, Linux and the Internet were still in their infancy and cybersecurity was really just getting started. I had started Guardian Digital just a year before and we were traveling around the country to trade shows. The Linux Security Quick Reference Guide was an idea by one of my buddies, where I then implemented it.
LinuxSecurity was always a way for me to give back to the community, and this "quick reference card" that sysadmins can use to refer to many of the popular security commands that are necessary for a Linux system was just part of that open source spirit of giving. It also quickly became part of the Linux Documentation Project as one of the few security documents that existed at the time, with the other being the Linux Security HOWTO that I wrote.
It was physically printed on a heavy yellow cardstock, then distributed from our booth at a Linux tradeshow in San Diego, California. I believe we printed about 2500 of them, and had just a few left by the end. I believe there's one small typo that made it through to the printed version, but it otherwise was really successful and everyone loved it. Many of the commands are still useful, but lots of them are relics of a much older time around Linux.
Perhaps you were a Linux user then and remember? Were you at one of the Linux trade shows of the late 1990s and early 2000s and have a story to share?
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