Lynis is a Unix

Unix

Unix is a multitasking, multi-user computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna...

-based auditing tool. It assists an auditor in scanning a Unix system and available software. The software will try detecting installed packages, configuration errors, security issues and system information.

The software helps with automated auditing and software patch management, and also vulnerability

Vulnerability (computing)

In computer security, a vulnerability is a weakness which allows an attacker to reduce a system's information assurance.Vulnerability is the intersection of three elements: a system susceptibility or flaw, attacker access to the flaw, and attacker capability to exploit the flaw...

/malware

Malware

Malware, short for malicious software, consists of programming that is designed to disrupt or deny operation, gather information that leads to loss of privacy or exploitation, or gain unauthorized access to system resources, or that otherwise exhibits abusive behavior...

 scanning of Unix based systems. It can be started from USB stick, CD or DVD.

The intended audience is system auditors, security specialists, penetration testers, and system/network managers.

Development

The tool is created by Michael Boelen, original author of rkhunter

Rkhunter

rkhunter is a Unix-based tool that scans for rootkits, backdoors and possible local exploits. It does this by comparing SHA-1 hashes of important files with known good ones in online database, searching for default directories , wrong permissions, hidden files, suspicious strings in kernel...

. It's available under the GPLv3 license.

External links

• Project page