Network Security Hacks: Amazon.co.uk: Andrew Lockhart: Books

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Tips & Tools for Protecting Your Privacy

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In the fast-moving world of computers, things are always changing. Since the first edition of this strong-selling book appeared two years ago, network security techniques and tools have evolved rapidly to meet new and more sophisticated threats that pop up with alarming regularity. The second edition offers both new and thoroughly updated hacks for Linux, Windows, OpenBSD, and Mac OS X servers that not only enable readers to secure TCP/IP-based services, but helps them implement a good deal of clever host-based security techniques as well.

This second edition of Network Security Hacks offers 125 concise and practical hacks, including more information for Windows administrators, hacks for wireless networking (such as setting up a captive portal and securing against rogue hotspots), and techniques to ensure privacy and anonymity, including ways to evade network traffic analysis, encrypt email and files, and protect against phishing attacks. System administrators looking for reliable answers will also find concise examples of applied encryption, intrusion detection, logging, trending and incident response.

In fact, this "roll up your sleeves and get busy" security book features updated tips, tricks & techniques across the board to ensure that it provides the most current information for all of the major server software packages. These hacks are quick, clever, and devilishly effective.

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2 Reviews

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3.5 out of 5 stars (2 customer reviews)

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent guide to securing a network, 22 May 2009

By

N. Williams (Liverpool, UK) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)

This review is from: Network Security Hacks (Paperback)

I found the information in this guide very useful. Some bits of it I was already aware of but the vast majority was new and interesting.

I tried out one or two of the hacks at home and found they told me a lot about my system I didn't know (issues now fixed I might add).

I also used one or two of them in work, which initially scared my boss when he saw the title of the book but when he saw the results he was extremely impressed. We now have a better network, so I earned a few 'brownie points' there :).

I really think this is an excellent guide to network security and I'm sure you'll learn something you didn't already know from it.

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3.0 out of 5 stars Is this for you?, 10 Jun 2009

By

Siraj A. Shaikh (Swindon, Wilts, UK) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)

This review is from: Network Security Hacks (Paperback)

Network Security Hack is a collection of short practical articles covering a variety of useful tools and tips ranging from running services in a sandbox to configuring packet filters using PF. Each hack motivates the reader by clarifying the problem at hand followed by a step-by-step guide to solving it.

The collection comes together as a somewhat handy book, especially for security administrators working in the practical field.

Lockhart and the contributors cover a wide range of topics for hardening host platforms (both Unix and Windows), securing wireless networks and configuring host and network intrusion detection, amongst others.

Illustrated with code examples and screenshots, a number of configurations and (mostly open source) tools are introduced and reviewed; some, such as Snort, are covered in more detail than others.

The book presents an interesting structure: individual topics are covered with each hack placed in a purposeful sequence to enable the reader to delve into one thing at a time. This provides a useful breadth of the topic without losing the readers' interest.

Chapter 8 for instance helps with installing a Syslog server, filtering logs to different files, setting it up similarly on a windows platform, followed by summarising and aggregating logs from remote sites. By the end of it, one is able to gain a good practical overview of event logging and auditing.

Readers new to the field and eager to learn may not be able to fully appreciate underlying concepts often necessary to grasp before scanning for vulnerabilities with Nessus for example, or rewriting rules for Snort. For those with a head start, the book fails to cover anything new; readers looking for innovative approaches or new tools may be disappointed.

This book provides good value for money, especially for the wide range of topics it covers, and essentially provides a hands-on technical resource for readers working with systems and network security. Though often assuming a prior basic understanding of the area, the language used is clear and practical. For those who are keen to quickly get down and dirty with tools, this is the book for you.

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Amazon.com: 4.1 out of 5 stars (21 customer reviews)

23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A handy guide when trying unfamiliar tools or techniques, 1 July 2004

By Richard Bejtlich "TaoSecurity" - Published on Amazon.com

This review is from: Network Security Hacks: 100 Industrial-Strength Tips & Tools (Paperback)

"Network Security Hacks" (NSH) has something for nearly everyone, although it focuses squarely on Linux, BSD, and Windows, in that order of preference. Administrators for commercial UNIX variants (Solaris, AIX, HP-UX, etc.) should be able to apply much of the book's advice to their environments, but they are not the target audience. NSH is written for admins needing quick-start guides for common security tools, and in this respect it delivers.

I found NSH to be most rewarding when it avoided discussing the same topics everyone else has covered. Lesser known tools like authpf, ftester, sniffdet, SFS, rpcapd, and Sguil caught my interest (especially as I write Sguil installation docs). Even some ways to use familiar tools were helpful, like the -f (fork) and -N (no command) switches for SSH forwarding. In some cases it made sense to mention well-worn topics like BIND or MySQL, with an eye towards quickly augmenting the security of those servers.

Elsewhere I questioned the need to cover certain tools. With the number of Snort titles approaching double digits, and O'Reilly's own Snort books in the wings, was it really necessary to devote several hacks to Snort? In the same respect, I felt mention of Nmap, Nessus, swatch, and ACID was not needed, nor was advice on implementing certain Windows security features.

In some cases the descriptions were too brief to really explain the technologies at hand. For example, the "Secure Tunnels" chapter discusses a very specific IPSec scenario (wireless client to gateway) without informing the reader of the other sorts of tunnels that are possible. I also questioned some of the content, like p. 47's statement that Windows lacks "robust built-in scripting." Brian Knittel's "Windows XP Under the Hood" would quickly change the author's mind. Also, the anomaly detection preprocessor SPADE is described, even though the last version (Spade-030125.1.tgz, released Jan 03) is only available on a Polish student's Web server and no longer cleanly integrates with Snort past version 2.0.5, released in Nov 03.

Despite these comments, I still found NSH a great addition to my security bookshelf. I found the coverage of Windows more than adequate, given that true security innovation in the public sphere is being done in the open source world and not in Redmond's labs. The writing tends to be clear and the descriptions concise. I guarantee you will find a handful of hacks which pique your curiosity and ultimately help secure your enterprise.

33 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Not for the amateur, 29 July 2004

By Jack D. Herrington "engineer and author" - Published on Amazon.com

This review is from: Network Security Hacks: 100 Industrial-Strength Tips & Tools (Paperback)

It's important to understand who this book is for. It's not for the amateur looking to configure their firewall. The book starts with locking up UNIX filesystems and doesn't turn back the complexity clock as it winds through all the way to advanced topics like Honeypots and various SSH tunneling schemes. I highly recommend this book for network administrators and security professionals looking to make sure they have all of their bases covered. However, for the personal computer user looking to make sure their DSL doesn't get hacked I cannot recommend this book.

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent book on security., 9 Sep 2004

By swallbridge - Published on Amazon.com

This review is from: Network Security Hacks: 100 Industrial-Strength Tips & Tools (Paperback)

This book took me a long time to read, but for a good reason, I kept implementing
the various hacks in the book on a server I had started setting up.

The book is mostly Unix related, but there is some Windows related `hacks' as well.
I think the Windows coverage was lacking a bit though. For Unix, it talks about
Linux, the BSD's and a bit on Mac OS X and Solaris. Most of the topics are
general enough to apply to any Unix based Operating System, but some are specific
to an operating system.

One of the great things about the Hacks series of books by O'Reilly is that the
information is presented in nice small chunks that you can read in a few minutes
if you have some spare time.

The hacks are all `hyperlinked' to each other, if a hack mentions something that
relates to another hack, it is highlighted in blue and the hack that it
references is listed. I did find a few places where this wasn't done
(#84 Real-Time Monitoring, first mentions Barnyard but doesn't provide any
information on it or mention that it is one of the later hacks).

Lots of the hacks in the book could be found by doing some reading on the
internet, but finding such a variety of topics all in one place, with enough
information to get you started is really nice. Even though I consider myself to
be fairly security conscious, I still found quite a few things in this book that
I hadn't thought of, or plain didn't realize were possible or even existed. I
would recommend this book to anyone that is interested in security or anyone
responsible for maintaining a server (whether or not it is on the internet).

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