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Hackers Beware: The Ultimate Guide to Network Security (NRG - Voices)
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by Eric Cole
Sales Rank: 365996
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Discount: 38 %
List Price: $45.00
$40.50
At Amazon
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Paperback: 800 pages
Publisher: Sams; 1 edition August 23, 2001
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0735710090
ISBN-13: 978-0735710092
Product Dimensions:
9 x 7 x 1.9 inches
Shipping Weight: 2.7 pounds
Product Review
In Hackers Beware, Eric Cole succeeds in explaining how hackers break into computers, steal information, and deny services to machines' legitimate users. An intended side effect of his documentary efforts is a feeling for how network-connected computers should be configured for maximum resistance to attack. Cole, who works with the attack-monitoring SANS Institute as an instructor and security consultant, conveys to his readers specific knowledge of offensive and defensive weaponry as well as general familiarity with attack strategies and good security practices. Hackers Beware is a good primer and really earns its price by going into enough detail to enable readers to actually do something to make their resources safer. It also enables its readers to understand more specialized security texts, including Stephen Northcutt's fine Intrusion Signatures and Analysis.
Cole's didactic style is largely conversational, embracing the fact that most computer exploits can be conveyed as stories about what hackers want and the steps they take to achieve their goals. He punctuates his prose passages with line drawings that clarify what gets passed among the machines involved in an attack, and pauses frequently to show programs' user interfaces and passages from their logs. Cole explains all the jargon he uses--a characteristic that alone distinguishes this book from many of its competitors. --David Wall
Topics covered: What motivates black-hat hackers, and the technical means they use to go about satisfying their ambitions. General attack strategies--spoofing, password cracking, social engineering, and buffer overflows, among others--are explained, and the tools used to carry them out are catalogued. The same goes for defensive tools and practices.
–Alan Paller, Director of Research, The SANS Institute
The depth of Eric's understanding is obvious and his extraordinary teaching style comes right through to the reader.
Customer Reviews & Comments
I am a senior engineer for network security operations. I have attended Eric Cole's excellent SANS classes and consider him a professional acquaintance. "Hackers Beware" is a welcome contribution to the security community. Although some of the material is redundant, you're bound to gain new insights on network intrusions by reading this book. The message of "Hackers Beware" is clear: prevention is preferred, but detection is mandatory. To discover intrusions, one must understand the tools and tactics of the adversary. To this end, "Hackers Beware" devotes chapters to information gathering, spoofing, session hijacking, denial of service, buffer overflows, password security, access preservation, and log cleaning. Some of the material in these chapters is based on the "practicum" required of SANS students. My favorite section, without doubt, was chapter 17: "Other Types of Attacks." It features many valuable essays by SANS students on BIND NXT exploitation, cookie-based overflows, SNMP enumeration, and other topics. Publishing student material has its drawbacks, however. "Hackers Beware" is repetitive, a sin given the book's page count (778). Why include yet another explanation of buffer overflows in chapter 14, for example, when a whole chapter (7) already discusses them? (Actually, Brent Hughes' work in chapter 14 is more enlightening!) Furthermore, the "fundamentals" of UNIX and NT chapters are much less informative compared to Ed Skoudis' chapters in "Counter Hack." I also recommend New Riders help the author overcome his addiction to "three phrase sentences," such as "Now the Internet is very popular, and everyone is using Linux because it is powerful and inexpensive, so the number of people beating on the system is very high." (p. 480.) Future editions should reduce the number of vulnerabilities described in favor of more thorough explanations of sample exploits. For example, a virtual reprint of cDc's advisory on a NetMeeting weakness teaches me very little; providing background on the coding, system calls, and principles of this exploit is more useful. I would also pare the student-based material down to the essential core, removing generic material discussed elsewhere. I'd almost buy "Hackers Beware" for chapter 17 alone, so I'm sure security professionals will find many reasons to enjoy this book. (Disclaimer: I received a free review copy from the publisher.)
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Hackers Beware: The Ultimate Guide to Network Security (NRG - Voices)
List Price: $45.00
Discount: 38 %
Available from Amazon
Price: $40.50
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