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Network Security Hacks
The book is structured around many security subjects. These are: UNIX, Windows, Network Security, Logging (covering collecting, summarizing and analyzing log files), Monitoring, (covering system and network monitoring and collecting various statistics), Tunnels (covering various kind of VPNs and encrypted communication), Intrusion Detection, and Recovery and Response (short section covering very basic forensics).
Each section has a dozen or more tips, each taking from a page to several pages. For example, looking for SUID and SGID files takes just half a page, while installing and configuring Snort NIDS takes several pages. As a result, the style is understandably terse and to-the point.
The book ended up being one cool collection of tips, ranging from mundane ('how to configure iptables on Linux') to fairly esoteric ('how to use MySQL as an authenticating backend for an FTP server'). If you've always wanted to use 'grsecurity' or 'systrace,' but thought they were too complicated - grab the book and give it a shot. If you want to set up a fancy encrypted tunnel between two networks, it covers that too. Admittedly, a lot of advice given in the book can be found on Google, but it is nice to find it in one place. Network Security Hacks covers selected topics in host security, SSH and VPNs, IDS, monitoring and even touches upon forensics. I also liked its multi-platform coverage, with a slight but unmistakable UNIX/Linux bias.
Overall, Network Security Hacks is a great book, provided you don't try to find in it something it isn't; it is a neat collection of simple network security tips. I somewhat disliked that many tips don't go beyond 'how to install a tool' and so stop short of discussing how to use it best. Another gripe: I'd rather some of the tips skipped the obvious (such as "./configure; make; make install") and focused on little known and cool ways to use technology for security. Network Security Hacks will be useful for people involved with system and network management, those starting up in the security field, as well as for more advanced professionals (as a way to check their knowledge and skills). Also, it helps folks to jump straight to effective ways of doing things in the areas where their skills are less developed.
For example, I knew it was possible to use SSH to create a makeshift VPN, but this books is the first I've seen with a really good description of doing so. Similarly, I found some neat MySQL hardening tips in the book. Overall, there is a lot in the book for most people who are somehow involved in computer security, particularly if they're also running UNIX or Linux.
Anton Chuvakin, Ph.D., GCIA, GCIH is a Senior Security Analyst with a major security information management company, author of Security Warrior (and contributor to Know Your Enemy II), and maintainer of security portal info-secure.org You can purchase Network Security Hacks from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews. To see your own review here, carefully read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
I've been beating myself over the head trying to find a gift for my Script Kiddie nephew! Thank you Andrew Lockhart!
"Network security hacks" - sounds like some setups I know of.
Its a very good reference book. If anyones looking for a good beginners book thats similar tho this one then check out Steal This Computer Book 3: What They Won't Tell You About the Internet
From what I read in the review, it looks more like a beginner's guide to network security. It could prove to be quite useful for someone fairly new to it. In the Air Force, quite a few people who deal with IT are pretty new to this stuff (a lot of people are straight out of high school), and even though most stuff we deal with is Windows-centric, we still need to know Unix for things such as firewalls. Looks like the book could be handy for both.
It would be cool if it didn't suck.
Admittedly, a lot of advice given in the book can be found on Google, but it is nice to find it in one place.
Well duh...
Google knows everything, therefore includes any book, just like sea water contains sugar (and almost any known chemical compound) but it's so diluted it would make a lousy sweetener. Therefore, books are good, whether or not Google contains the information in the book.
why can't I shake the image of Wyle. E. Coyote reading his Acme book of Hacking just before trying something he's about to reget...
"Is this just useless, or is it expensive as well?"
You could probably just look at the table of contents of this book and do a search on each section/topic. Actually I might try just that, might turn up some interesting stuff.
with a title like Network Security Hacks I would expect much more than teaching me how to install a program on my computer or how to use SSH to tunnel a connection like the reviewer has said.
Sorry if im being mean but you can learn just as much by reading the manpages or by using google after the how-tos.
If you really want to learn something useful about networks I suggest the good old Richard Stevens
What is best in life? To crush your enemies, to see them driven before you and to hear the lamentations of their women.
This deal ends today (7/8) so hurry out:
Hackers and Painters
Network Security Hacks
Windows XP Hacks
Hardware Hacking
Ipod and Itunes: The missing manual
Hardware Hacking projects for geeks
Adobe photoshop CS one on one
Mac OS X Panther: the missing manual
The fastest, best, AND cheapest way to test network security is to load up an irc client on it and go to a linux channel. Then simply talk about how your "windows" system is unhackble.
This is a biggie. You can prevent users from creating code in /home if you want, and you can keep runnable stuff out of /tmp or /var.
Debian does a really great job of keeping those paths pure so that packages don't rely on them having runnable things. This means great strides in security if you mount with those options, save one terrible exception: dselect wants to run scripts in tmp :(
Wonder why the Air Force and other military branches don't have superior IT staff?
When their time to re-enlist comes up, they can take that knowledge (and security clearance) and go get paid 5-10 times what the service pays them to work for a contactor to the NSA, FBI, CIA, or the big defense contractors.
Why would you stay?
Wonder why there are so many guys not re-enlisting? Is it that they don't want to serve or go back to Iraq? Nope. They see the private security guys there making 10-20 times what they make for the same job...
I see a trend here.
My mom says I'm cool.
I was lucky enough to get a review copy from O'reilly. One of the first things I tried was faking your OS signature for port scans. It was interesting to try it out, but I had to downgrade my Linux Kernel to 2.4.18 *gasp*. So after a recompile, and configuring iptables for IP Personalities, nmap detected "Sega DreamCast Console" on aforementioned machine. There are other signatures, I just wanted to try out the most amusing one. The problem is the patch is deprecated, buggy, not being developed, and the sparse documentation mentions it can make your TCP sequences less secure. Hey, it was amusing to try it, but too much hassle, and maybe it is not the most secure solution. Don't know what this one was doing in a security book, considering it could cause your system to be less secure. Nmap detects the faked signature about 90% of the time, depends on how the network is routed and such.
Most of the Windows hacks are a matter of downloading 3rd party software, however there was one registry hack to turn off Default SMB shares (C$ and ADMIN$), this was the only Win Hack.
I have enjoyed reading so far, and will get around to finishing it...eventually. Much like the other hack books there are hacks in here for beginners, intermediates, and wizards.
/^([Ss]ame [Bb]at (time, |channel.)){2}$/
bash-2.05b$ bash -r
bash: SHELL: readonly variable
bash: PATH: readonly variable
bash-2.05b$ ls
bash: ls: No such file or directory
bash-2.05b$
Now users cannot run anything that is not symlinked to their home directory.
/^([Ss]ame [Bb]at (time, |channel.)){2}$/
I've just finished a setup with snort, apf, logsurfer and a custom program to create a live repsone firewall.
snort will detect the offensive network traffic and put it into the alert log file. Logsurfer will then trigger and email me with a notice, it will run a program I wrote to blacklist the attacking IP (my program checks to make sure the IP is not already banned and makes sure the IP is not my own so I do not get locked out). Finally, my program updates the firewall to block the bastard.
The only hole I see in this setup is a DoS by attacking with different spoofed "from IPs" until the firewall rules are too big, or too many legit servers are banned.