Customer Reviews

Hackproofing Your Wireless Network

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

"Hack Proofing Your Wireless Network" (HPYWN) weighs in at 512 pages, but it could easily be half that size. While the book contains good information, its internal redundancy and inclusion of security advice not specific to wireless adds unnecessary pages. I recommend security professionals skim HPYWN for the material they need, and skip the generic network protection advice.

Unlike the attack-minded "Hack Proofing Your Network, 2nd Ed", HPYWN is indeed a defensive-oriented book. It offers strong overviews of widely deployed wireless technologies. These include modern cellular networks and wireless area networks created by 802.11, Bluetooth, and HomeRF. HPYWN offers sound advice on making the best use of available wireless defensive mechanisms, despite acknowledging that Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) is "broken." An overview of popular wireless assessment tools like Netstumbler is helpful although not especially thorough...

Of the book's nine chapters, chapters 2 (A Security Primer, 50 pages) and 8 (Auditing, 43 pages) don't add anything original to the current body of published security books. Furthermore, many wireless security topics are discussed repeatedly. For example, I didn't need to read in chapters 1, 4, 5, and 6 that WEP's insecurities stem from weak Initialization Vectors. Other recommendations on changing default configurations, enabling logging, and so on also appear in multiple sections. The editor should have consolidated this information to avoid wasting the reader's time.

Overall, Syngress should be credited for getting into the wireless game with this book. I would have preferred to see protocol decodes, thorough documentation and usage examples for wireless assessment tools, and in-depth VPN deployment guidance. Should the second edition of HPYWN contain this information, it will justify its current page count.

Our company is in the midst of several large scale wireless deployments, and security is one of our primary concerns. This book does a great job of detailing all of the vulnerabilities and attacks, and presents real solutions for preventing attacks and data or services being compromised. There are some good wireles books out there now, but this is the one to get if you want something really focused on security.

Hack Proofing Your Wireless Network is an invaluable resource for implementing or administering a wireless network. War Driving (searching for random insecure wireless networks) is happening all over. To keep your personal and confidential information private and to keep prying eyes from surfing your wireless network or hujacking your bandwidth you need to make sure you do everything you can to secure your wireless network. The case studies, Security Alerts, FAQ's and other features of this book all help to provide a comprehensive, must-read book on wireless network security. If you are new to the concept this book is written in a way that you will understand. Even if you know this stuff, this book should be kept close as a reference.

(...)

A good book to keep in reach whether you're looking for a refresher, or to learn new processes, techniques, etc. I've got some experience with wireless (although not a guru), and I learned some new stuff... A good book written by authors with obvious wireless experience.

Obviously, with WLANs the big issue now is security. If you are looking for a good introduction to the topic or work with WLANs already and need to learn about security, then this is a good place to start. This book lays a good foundation of knowledge and then is an interesting an easy read on the topic. The authors certainly demonstrate that they know their business. In a total of nine chapters they will take you through the majority of what you would need to know to keep your WLAN safe from the wardrivers. In addition to this, if you are thinking of going for any of the WLAN security certifications, this book will take you a long way down that road as well. Once again, another good publication from Syngress!