Linux Firewalls (New Riders Professional Library) [Paperback]

Robert L. Ziegler (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0735709009 | ISBN-13: 978-0735709003 | Publication Date: November 3, 1999 | Edition: 1

With the explosion of Linux on both college campuses and in corporate environments, any marketable CS student will need Linux skills in his bag. In addition to guiding students through the basic steps of designing and implementing a packet-filtering firewall, Linux Firewalls discusses disabling unnecessary services, selecting services to make public, and identifying dangerous local services that need to be protected behind a firewall. Students will find information on higher-level forms of access control, common server configuration issues, and system security and integrity monitoring. They will gain skills to detect preliminary probes and unauthorized access attempts before an intrusion occurs. Ideal of both security and system administration courses.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

TCP/IP packet handling may seem crystal clear when you first hear about it, but after you've configured your Ethernet card's netmask address, the details become rather vague. You might find yourself asking--if you were a Danish prince--"What is a packet, if its chief good and market of its time be but to route and wrap?" If routing and wrapping were all packets did, we would all enjoy our ignorance blissfully. But packets--like men, as the prince learned--can be hollow carriers of ill will, and excluding the bad ones requires us to understand what they really truly are. At last.

Just how interesting packets turn out to be is revealed in Linux Firewalls, Robert L. Zeigler's sober, agile, and subtle text. Narrowing consideration to threats faced by small networks from external sources, Zeigler and his editors introduce security by delivering prerequisite tutorials on packet architecture and normal network-based client/server daemon-to-daemon communications. Nonthreatening daemon-to-daemon communication is part of the regular operation of a networked POSIX-compliant operating system (like Linux or Windows NT), but the incessant background chatter makes finding hostile intrusions a search for sometimes subtle irregularities in a high throughput environment.

In fact, bombardment of networks with useless packets can create diversions for more pernicious attacks. Distinguishing the good packets from the potentially hostile or merely useless packets requires levels of filtering criteria that depend on the specifics of the network environment. Zeigler sorts out all of these issues and outlines practical network administration strategies for packet filtering.

Linux Firewalls is a how-to for the home Linux box, including the creating and debugging firewall rules for home LANs and network interfaces. For larger LAN users, Zeigler describes intrusion logging; configurations based on varying levels of trust; and the how, why, and when of reporting intrusions to network authorities.

In the wrong hands, firewall reports are either hyped-up cloak-and-dagger sensationalism or monotonous treatises in bitwise accounting. Zeigler strikes a middle ground with a book fit for members of the Linux community who are curious about what is happening over their TCP/IP connections. These are folks who have the prowess to build kernel releases on their own but who aren't necessarily wonks at developing kernel or device driver sources. --Peter Leopold

From the Publisher

An Internet-connected Linux machine is in a high-risk situation. This book details security steps that a home or small-to-mid-size, non-enterprise business might take to protect itself from potential remote attackers. As with the first edition, this book will provide a description of the need for security measures and solutions built upon the most up-to-date technology available. What's new in the Second Edition? Besides updating the content to cover the 2.4 kernel, additional chapters on VPNs, SSH, and Tripwire have been added. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 496 pages
• Publisher: New Riders Press; 1 edition (November 3, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0735709009
• ISBN-13: 978-0735709003
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6.9 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (38 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,287,023 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Obsession with details, April 26, 2000

By 

Dean K. Gibson (Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Linux Firewalls (New Riders Professional Library) (Paperback)

Good points:

* Lots of details about how to set up packet filtering in Linux.

* Good reference material about various ports & services.

Bad points:

* The command lines in his "rc.firewall" scripts are long and thus wrap when printed in the book, making the scripts VERY difficult to read. A smaller, fixed-pitch font for the scripts, and good use of column alignment would have helped tremendously.

* Scant discussion of the "hosts.allow" and "hosts.deny" files, or of TCP/IP wrappers and inetd. Both are an essential part of Linux firewalls.

* The overall organization of the book is good, but some of the detail in the chapters is not well organized. Since he protects against invalid packets going OUT as well as coming IN, there's a lot of detail that many people will not want. That detail tends to obscure the WHY of what he's doing.

* In the appendix, he lists in exhaustive detail all his firewall rules, and then lists them AGAIN in a "better" order. Yes, the second order is better for BOTH efficiency and understanding, so why provide the first list? Actually, there are SIX complete lists in the appendix: three for ipchains, and another three lists for ipfwadm), but that's another story ...

All in all, a good book in spite of the above. There are a few typos, but once you understand what he's doing, the typos are obvious.

24 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent book - well worth the read!, December 13, 1999

By 

Shaun T. Erickson (N. Plainfield, NJ, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Linux Firewalls (New Riders Professional Library) (Paperback)

As a System Administrator who is trying to add new skills to his resume, and a home cablemodem user who wants to protect his private network from hackers on the Internet, I have found Mr. Ziegler's book, "Linux Firewalls", to be excellent, as I have also found his website to be. I read his book, cover to cover, within 24 hours of it's purchase (no small feat). Most informative!

It takes an honored place on my bookshelf, next to my other firewall bibles (Chapman & Zwicky's "Building Internet Firewalls" and Cheswick & Bellovin's "Firewalls and Internet Security : Repelling the Wily Hacker").

32 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Real Practical Solutions, December 4, 1999

By 

Phil Lavigna - See all my reviews

This review is from: Linux Firewalls (New Riders Professional Library) (Paperback)

This author has been providing a great service to the Linux community with his Firewall Design Tool... I've used it to configure several firewalls with outstanding results (from portscans). I also purchased this book even though I never put the two names together until I saw an ad linking the two. Linux Firewalls isn't one of those books you read by the fireplace, but it's full of specific solutions to specific issues that all networks face. I appreciate the author's knowledge and recommend his website and book to Linux users.