rootninja

The default out-of-the-box installation should delete anonymous users after installation and disallow remote logins completely, but it doesn’t.

I wonder how many people setup MySQL server and forget to run that, or don’t know/care that there’s an anonymous user account? Perhaps this doesn’t matter much anymore and I should focus on Oracle or postgresql instead, but there’s lots of apps that are well documented on how to set up to use MySQL, such as Django for example, so it’s still a great dbms for testing.

But too many times something set up for testing ends up getting used in production, or semi-production as in, it’s running right along side production stuff, and for an extended period of time. Perhaps you just rely on your firewall to block remote access and you don’t care about accounts or passwords at all. Well at least all you have to do is run the mysql_secure_installation script clean things up a bit.

# /usr/bin/mysql_secure_installation

NOTE: RUNNING ALL PARTS OF THIS SCRIPT IS RECOMMENDED FOR ALL MySQL
SERVERS IN PRODUCTION USE! PLEASE READ EACH STEP CAREFULLY!

In order to log into MySQL to secure it, we’ll need the current
password for the root user. If you’ve just installed MySQL, and
you haven’t set the root password yet, the password will be blank,
so you should just press enter here.

Enter current password for root (enter for none):
OK, successfully used password, moving on…

Setting the root password ensures that nobody can log into the MySQL
root user without the proper authorisation.

Set root password? [Y/n]
New password:
Re-enter new password:
Password updated successfully!
Reloading privilege tables..
… Success!

By default, a MySQL installation has an anonymous user, allowing anyone
to log into MySQL without having to have a user account created for
them. This is intended only for testing, and to make the installation
go a bit smoother. You should remove them before moving into a
production environment.

Remove anonymous users? [Y/n]
… Success!

Normally, root should only be allowed to connect from ‘localhost’. This
ensures that someone cannot guess at the root password from the network.

Disallow root login remotely? [Y/n]
… Success!

By default, MySQL comes with a database named ‘test’ that anyone can
access. This is also intended only for testing, and should be removed
before moving into a production environment.

Remove test database and access to it? [Y/n]
- Dropping test database…
… Success!
- Removing privileges on test database…
… Success!

Reloading the privilege tables will ensure that all changes made so far
will take effect immediately.

Reload privilege tables now? [Y/n]
… Success!

Cleaning up…

All done! If you’ve completed all of the above steps, your MySQL
installation should now be secure.

Thanks for using MySQL!