Installing singularity in ubuntu 20.04

SingularityCE is a container platform. It allows you to create and run containers that package up pieces of software in a way that is portable and reproducible. 

You can build a container using SingularityCE on your laptop, and then run it on many of the largest HPC clusters in the world, local university or company clusters, a single server, in the cloud, or on a workstation down the hall.

Your container is a single file, and you don’t have to worry about how to install all the software you need on each different operating system.

In short, singularity is an alternative to docker.

To install singularity in ubuntu 20.04:

1. Update repositories

$ sudo apt update

2. Download the installer. Please refer to the github page for the latest version. 3.9.7 is the latest version when this guide is being written

$ wget https://github.com/sylabs/singularity/releases/download/v3.9.7/singularity-ce_3.9.7-bionic_amd64.deb

3. Install singularity

$ sudo apt install ./singularity-ce_3.9.7-bionic_amd64.deb

4. Test singularity

$ singularity version

3.9.7-bionic

How to install go in linux

Go is a programming language, created by engineers at Google in 2007 to create dependable and efficient software. Go is most similarly modeled after C.

To install go linux, the steps are very easy.

1. Download go package from https://go.dev/dl/

$ wget https://go.dev/dl/go1.18.linux-amd64.tar.gz

2. Extract the tar package

$ tar xvf go1.18.linux-amd64.tar.gz 

3. Include the go bin directory into PATH

echo "export PATH=\$PATH:/home/user/go/bin" ~/.bashrc

source ~/.bashrc

4. Test your go command

$ go version

go version go1.18 linux/amd64

Testing SSL configuration using testssl.sh

SSL is an important part of web application security nowadays. Many tools are available to test out our SSL configuration, but almost all of the tools are web based. One of the great tool that I found that can be used out of a terminal, is called testssl.sh.

Some of the benefits of using testssl.sh

1. easy installation, even available as docker image
2. easy usage
3. fast
4. clear and detailed output
5. free
6. open source
7. privacy - your test, your result, only you can see it

To use this tool, simply download it:

$ wget https://testssl.sh/testssl.sh-3.0.7.tar.gz

And deploy it anywhere on your linux machine

$ tar xvf testssl.sh-3.0.7.tar.gz

Make it easier to access

$ ln -s testssl.sh-3.0.7 testssl

And we are good to go. To use it, just run the command, and provide the url we want to test against the command

$ cd testssl 

$ ./testssl.sh https://mysslwebsite.com

Once we have the result, just fix the "NOT Ok" part, and rerun the above command. Rinse and repeat until you are fully satisfied with your ssl configuration. 

To get a visually better results with grading, just run the qualys ssl server test once you have fully tuned your ssl configuration with testssl.sh.