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The Myths of Security
brothke writes "The Myths of Security: What the Computer Security Industry Doesn't Want You to Know is an interesting and thought-provoking book. Ultimately, the state of information security can be summed up in the book's final three sentences, in which John Viega writes that 'real, timely improvement is possible, but it requires people to care a lot more [about security] than they do. I'm not sure that's going to happen anytime soon. But I hope it does.'" Read on for the rest of Ben's review.
The Myths of Security: What the Computer Security Industry Doesn't Want You to Know
author
John Viega
pages
260
publisher
O'Reilly Media
rating
8
reviewer
Ben Rothke
ISBN
978-0596523022
summary
A contrarian provides an interesting look at the information security industry
The reality is that while security evangelists such as Viega write valuable books such as this, it is for the most part falling on deaf ears. Most people don't understand computer security and its risks, and therefore places themselves and the systems they are working in danger. Malware finds computers to load on, often in part to users who are oblivious to the many threats.
Much of the book is made up of Viega's often contrarian views of the security industry. With so much hype abound, many of the often skeptical views he writes about, show what many may perceive are information security truths, are indeed security myths.
From the title of the book, one might think that there is indeed a conspiracy in the computer security industry to keep users dumb and insecure. But as the author notes in chapter 45 — An Open Security Industry, the various players in the computer security industry all work in their own fiefdoms. This is especially true when it comes to anti-virus, with each vendor to a degree reinventing the anti-virus wheel. The chapter shows how sharing amongst these companies is heavily needed. With that, the book's title of What the Computer Security Industry Doesn't Want You to Know is clearly meant to be provocative, but not true-life.
The book is made up of 48 chapters, on various so called myths. Most of the chapter are 2-3 pages in length and tackle each of these myths. The range of topics covers the entire security industry, with topics spanning from various security technologies, issues, risks, and people.
While not every chapter is a myth per se, many are. Perhaps the most evocative of the security myth is chapters 10 — Four Minutes to Infection and chapter 22 — Do Antivirus Vendors Write their own Viruses?. But the bulk of the book is not about myths per se, rather an overview of the state of information security, and why it is in such a state.
In chapter 16, The Cult of Schneier [full disclosure — Bruce Schneier and I work for the same company], Viega takes Schneier to task for the fact that many people are using his book Applied Cryptography, even though it has not been updated in over a decade. It is not fair to blame him for that. While Viega admits that he holds Schneier in high esteem, the chapter reads like the author is somehow jealous of Schneier's security rock star status.
Chapter 18 is on the topic of security snake oil, ironically a topic Schneier has long been at the forefront of. The chapter gives the reader sage advice that it is important to do their homework on security products you buy and to make sure you have at least a high-level understanding of the technical merits and drawbacks of the security product at hand. The problem though is that the vast majority of end-users clearly don't have the technical wherewithal to do that. It is precisely that scenario that gives rise to far too many security snake-oil vendors.
Perhaps the best chapter in the book, and the one to likely get the most comments, is chapter 24 — Open Source Security: A Red Herring. Viega takes on Eric Raymond's theory of open source security that "given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow." Viega notes that a large challenge with security and open source is that a lot of the things that make for secure systems are not well defined. Viega closes with the argument that one can argue open versus closed source forever, but there isn't strong evidence to suggest that it is the right question to be asking in the first place.
Overall, The Myths of Security: What the Computer Security Industry Doesn't Want You to Know is good introduction to information security. While well-written and though provoking, the book may be too conceptual and unstructured for an average end-user, and too basic for many experienced information security professionals. But for those that are interested, the book covers the entire gamut of the information security, and the reader, either security pro or novice, comes out much better informed.
While the author makes it clear he works for McAfee, and at times takes the company to task; the book references McAfee far too many times. At times the book seems like it is an advertisement for the company.
Viega does give interesting and often entertaining overviews of what we often take for granted. Some of the books arguments are debatable, but many more are a refreshing look at the dynamic information security industry. Viega has sat down and written his observations of what it going on. They are worth perusing, and the book is definitely worth reading.
Ben Rothke is the author of Computer Security: 20 Things Every Employee Should Know .
You can purchase The Myths of Security: What the Computer Security Industry Doesn't Want You to Know from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews — to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Much of the book is made up of Viega's often contrarian views of the security industry. With so much hype abound, many of the often skeptical views he writes about, show what many may perceive are information security truths, are indeed security myths.
From the title of the book, one might think that there is indeed a conspiracy in the computer security industry to keep users dumb and insecure. But as the author notes in chapter 45 — An Open Security Industry, the various players in the computer security industry all work in their own fiefdoms. This is especially true when it comes to anti-virus, with each vendor to a degree reinventing the anti-virus wheel. The chapter shows how sharing amongst these companies is heavily needed. With that, the book's title of What the Computer Security Industry Doesn't Want You to Know is clearly meant to be provocative, but not true-life.
The book is made up of 48 chapters, on various so called myths. Most of the chapter are 2-3 pages in length and tackle each of these myths. The range of topics covers the entire security industry, with topics spanning from various security technologies, issues, risks, and people.
While not every chapter is a myth per se, many are. Perhaps the most evocative of the security myth is chapters 10 — Four Minutes to Infection and chapter 22 — Do Antivirus Vendors Write their own Viruses?. But the bulk of the book is not about myths per se, rather an overview of the state of information security, and why it is in such a state.
In chapter 16, The Cult of Schneier [full disclosure — Bruce Schneier and I work for the same company], Viega takes Schneier to task for the fact that many people are using his book Applied Cryptography, even though it has not been updated in over a decade. It is not fair to blame him for that. While Viega admits that he holds Schneier in high esteem, the chapter reads like the author is somehow jealous of Schneier's security rock star status.
Chapter 18 is on the topic of security snake oil, ironically a topic Schneier has long been at the forefront of. The chapter gives the reader sage advice that it is important to do their homework on security products you buy and to make sure you have at least a high-level understanding of the technical merits and drawbacks of the security product at hand. The problem though is that the vast majority of end-users clearly don't have the technical wherewithal to do that. It is precisely that scenario that gives rise to far too many security snake-oil vendors.
Perhaps the best chapter in the book, and the one to likely get the most comments, is chapter 24 — Open Source Security: A Red Herring. Viega takes on Eric Raymond's theory of open source security that "given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow." Viega notes that a large challenge with security and open source is that a lot of the things that make for secure systems are not well defined. Viega closes with the argument that one can argue open versus closed source forever, but there isn't strong evidence to suggest that it is the right question to be asking in the first place.
Overall, The Myths of Security: What the Computer Security Industry Doesn't Want You to Know is good introduction to information security. While well-written and though provoking, the book may be too conceptual and unstructured for an average end-user, and too basic for many experienced information security professionals. But for those that are interested, the book covers the entire gamut of the information security, and the reader, either security pro or novice, comes out much better informed.
While the author makes it clear he works for McAfee, and at times takes the company to task; the book references McAfee far too many times. At times the book seems like it is an advertisement for the company.
Viega does give interesting and often entertaining overviews of what we often take for granted. Some of the books arguments are debatable, but many more are a refreshing look at the dynamic information security industry. Viega has sat down and written his observations of what it going on. They are worth perusing, and the book is definitely worth reading.
Ben Rothke is the author of Computer Security: 20 Things Every Employee Should Know .
You can purchase The Myths of Security: What the Computer Security Industry Doesn't Want You to Know from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews — to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Mean as hell. However, he does have some redeemingfeatures.
Free Martian Whores!
Lots of friends and family - people who are otherwise thoughtful, intelligent, and clueful - simply don't think about security.
Well I think there are a few different issues here, and you have to break the issue apart a little to understand why they don't think about security.
At least part of it is just that security issues can be fairly complex in themselves, computers can be complex in themselves, and people generally don't want to deal with complex issues that they're not very knowledgeable about. It's intimidating, and a lot of people understand on an intuitive level that trying to secure your computer without knowing very much about computers or security is a bit pointless. If you don't understand the issues, fiddling with things is just as likely to open new security holes as it is to close any. In some ways it's fairly sensible to refrain from thinking too much about security and leave it to the experts.
Another problem is that security often comes with a trade-off to accessibility. This isn't an absolute universal principle, but often when you make something harder for unauthorized people to access, you're also going to make it more difficult for authorized people to access. Extra layers of security means authorized users have to jump through more hoops, be more mindful of their own actions, and risk losing access due to mistakes or bugs.
What makes it all worse is that many people simply don't understand how accessible their information is or what it means for their data to be accessible. Think, for example, of all the people who have posted information about their crimes on MySpace where the police can read it, or how many have posted about skipping work on Facebook where their boss can read it. So that's pretty obvious, but how many people do you think check to make sure their various online logins are using SSL? How many people actually sign their emails to verify their identity?
So no, this can't all be fixed with technical changes, but there may be things we can do. For example, I think we're underutilizing encryption technologies on the Internet.