Hardening SNMP on Debian by disabling SNMP v1 and v2c, and configuring SNMP v3.

Modify /etc/snmp/snmpd.conf

First we’ll want to open up the /etc/snmp/snmpd.conf file and comment out all lines that begin with

• rocommunity
• view
• rouser authPriv <– “This may be the last line by default, we don’t need it”

Alternatively, you can copy and paste the following sed commands instead of manually editing the file.

sudo sed -i 's/^rocommunity/# rocommunityc/g' /etc/snmp/snmpd.conf
sudo sed -i 's/^view/# view/g' /etc/snmp/snmpd.conf
sudo sed -i 's/^rouser authPriv/# rouser authPriv/g' /etc/snmp/snmpd.conf

Create SNMP v3 User

We can create a SNMP v3 user with the following command. There it will ask you for the username and passwords.

sudo net-snmp-create-v3-user -ro -a SHA-512 -x AES

You may receive an error about not being able to touch /snmp/snmpd.conf. I am not sure why Debian is attempting to create that file. Take the “rouser snmpuser” line and add it to the end of the /etc/snmp/snmpd.conf config.

Now we can start SNMPD

sudo systemctl start snmpd

Troubleshooting

My created user is not working! This could result from two different issues.

1. It appears that Debian/SNMP doesn’t like pass phrases with special characters. You can try using a different password or escaping the special characters in “/var/lib/snmp/snmpd.conf” file before starting SNMPD.
2. The user didn’t get added to /etc/snmp/snmpd.conf To fix, add “rouser snmpuser” (Change snmpuser to your snmp username) to the bottom of the config file.