Network Security Hacks: Tips & Tools for Protecting Your Privacy [Paperback]

Andrew Lockhart (Author)

Book Description

Series: Hacks | Publication Date: November 6, 2006

In the fast-moving world of computers, things are always changing. Since the first edition of this strong-selling book appeared two years ago, network security techniques and tools have evolved rapidly to meet new and more sophisticated threats that pop up with alarming regularity. The second edition offers both new and thoroughly updated 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.

This second edition of Network Security Hacks offers 125 concise and practical hacks, including more information for Windows administrators, hacks for wireless networking (such as setting up a captive portal and securing against rogue hotspots), and techniques to ensure privacy and anonymity, including ways to evade network traffic analysis, encrypt email and files, and protect against phishing attacks. System administrators looking for reliable answers will also find concise examples of applied encryption, intrusion detection, logging, trending and incident response.

In fact, this "roll up your sleeves and get busy" security book features updated tips, tricks & techniques across the board to ensure that it provides the most current information for all of the major server software packages. These hacks are quick, clever, and devilishly effective.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Andrew Lockhart is originally from South Carolina, but currently resides in northern Colorado where he spends his time trying to learn the black art of auditing disassembled binaries and trying to keep from freezing to death. He holds a BS in computer science from Colorado State University and has done security consulting for small businesses in the area. He currently works at a Fortune 100 company when not writing. In his free time he works on Snort-Wireless, a project intended to add wireless intrusion detection popular OpenSource IDS Snort.

Product Details

• Paperback: 480 pages
• Publisher: O'Reilly Media; Second Edition edition (November 6, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0596527632
• ISBN-13: 978-0596527631
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #421,025 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A handy guide when trying unfamiliar tools or techniques, June 30, 2004

By 

Richard Bejtlich "TaoSecurity" (Metro Washington, DC) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Network Security Hacks (Paperback)

"Network Security Hacks" (NSH) has something for nearly everyone, although it focuses squarely on Linux, BSD, and Windows, in that order of preference. Administrators for commercial UNIX variants (Solaris, AIX, HP-UX, etc.) should be able to apply much of the book's advice to their environments, but they are not the target audience. NSH is written for admins needing quick-start guides for common security tools, and in this respect it delivers.

I found NSH to be most rewarding when it avoided discussing the same topics everyone else has covered. Lesser known tools like authpf, ftester, sniffdet, SFS, rpcapd, and Sguil caught my interest (especially as I write Sguil installation docs). Even some ways to use familiar tools were helpful, like the -f (fork) and -N (no command) switches for SSH forwarding. In some cases it made sense to mention well-worn topics like BIND or MySQL, with an eye towards quickly augmenting the security of those servers.

Elsewhere I questioned the need to cover certain tools. With the number of Snort titles approaching double digits, and O'Reilly's own Snort books in the wings, was it really necessary to devote several hacks to Snort? In the same respect, I felt mention of Nmap, Nessus, swatch, and ACID was not needed, nor was advice on implementing certain Windows security features.

In some cases the descriptions were too brief to really explain the technologies at hand. For example, the "Secure Tunnels" chapter discusses a very specific IPSec scenario (wireless client to gateway) without informing the reader of the other sorts of tunnels that are possible. I also questioned some of the content, like p. 47's statement that Windows lacks "robust built-in scripting." Brian Knittel's "Windows XP Under the Hood" would quickly change the author's mind. Also, the anomaly detection preprocessor SPADE is described, even though the last version (Spade-030125.1.tgz, released Jan 03) is only available on a Polish student's Web server and no longer cleanly integrates with Snort past version 2.0.5, released in Nov 03.

Despite these comments, I still found NSH a great addition to my security bookshelf. I found the coverage of Windows more than adequate, given that true security innovation in the public sphere is being done in the open source world and not in Redmond's labs. The writing tends to be clear and the descriptions concise. I guarantee you will find a handful of hacks which pique your curiosity and ultimately help secure your enterprise.

33 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Not for the amateur, July 28, 2004

By 

Jack D. Herrington "engineer and author" (Silicon Valley, CA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Network Security Hacks (Paperback)

It's important to understand who this book is for. It's not for the amateur looking to configure their firewall. The book starts with locking up UNIX filesystems and doesn't turn back the complexity clock as it winds through all the way to advanced topics like Honeypots and various SSH tunneling schemes. I highly recommend this book for network administrators and security professionals looking to make sure they have all of their bases covered. However, for the personal computer user looking to make sure their DSL doesn't get hacked I cannot recommend this book.

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Useful Tips, Limited on Windows, July 31, 2004

By 

Joaquin Menchaca (San José, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Network Security Hacks (Paperback)

Overall, I find this book to be an enjoyable read. I thumb through it time and time again, and come up with some useful hints and tips (not really necessarily hacks though). It's more oriented toward BSD Unix and Linux, but I did find some useful hints for Windows (the current topic of my studies). I really like the plug for ntsyslod (hack 56), which can take binary event logs and route them to syslogd service. Nice. Finally, logs in Windows are now open for business.

I found some material to be trivial, making problems from non-problems, or rather not practical to implement. For example, one hint advises Windows users to encrypt their temp directory (hack 28). However, there are easy workarounds to bypass EFS, and the temp directory is within a user's profile, and thus secured from other users anyhow. So encrypting it is unecessary, and not useful given users can drag a file to a floppy or non-NTFS filesystem to and bypass the encryption.

One hack recommended flush the page file as some important application data might be in there (hack 29). However, this requires delving into the registry, and to implement across all workstations is too taxing. However, there could be ways to automate this through group policy objects and scripts. There's no coverage on how to automate some of these chores, which is not always straightforward in Windows.

One a final note, I wish there was more coverage of Windows. There's could be equivelent coverage of things like time sychronization (hack 44) for Windows as well.

Overall though, I think there are enough useful tips to make this book valuable. I've already wrote my name on this one...