Keeping Information Corralled and Virtual Predators Out
ISBN: 0596527632
Pages: 455
Publisher: O’Reilly
Topic: Networking
Most days, modern ranchers hop into their pickups or on their
horses and ride their fences. They’re checking for breaks. Sturdy fencing not
only prevents cattle or sheep from escaping but also protects them from
predators. Indeed, ranchers’ daily battles against the forces of nature have
turned them into hackers. They’ll grab what’s handy–old nails, scraps of wire,
discarded boards, rocks, even rip the shirts off their backs–to plug holes.
Of course, a durable network of gates, chutes, and corrals helps cowboys (or
cowgirls) hustle the herds safely from one pasture to the next or down to the
barn for branding or shearing.
Unlike modern cowboys, network security administrators don’t need horses, barbed
wire, and lassos to maintain security on their virtual range. Yet their jobs of
maintaining security and protecting their brands against virtual
predators–“black hat” hackers and crackers–are similar. They labor to maintain
secure communications and information flow over a vast and untrustworthy virtual
range–the Internet. And while theoretical solutions look good on paper and make
for terrific school projects, tracking virtual interlopers in real world markets
requires “quick and dirty” solutions–hacks.
Since the first edition of “Network Security Hacks” appeared two years ago,
network security techniques and tools have evolved rapidly to meet increasingly
sophisticated threats. With this great new second edition, author Andrew
Lockhart provides thoroughly updated, up-to-the-minute solution-based 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.
With “Network Security Hacks” (O’Reilly), readers get 125 concise, practical,
industrial-strength hacks to learn how to:
-Use Snort in high performance environments with Barnyard -Harden Linux, BSD,
and Windows hosts against attack -Detect, respond to, and recover from
inevitable system compromises -Set up virtual networks (honeypots) to divert and
confuse attackers
Aimed at intermediate to advanced network administrators, “Network Security
Hacks” provides a virtual pocketful of ready-to-grab solutions to everyday and
unexpected networking problems. To paraphrase the late poet Robert Frost, “good
fences make good neighbors, but a break requires a hack or two.” With this
invaluable book, security administrators get the reconnaissance tools quick
fixes they need for maintaining security along every virtual fencelines.