Linux Security Books

System administrators need to stay ahead of new security vulnerabilities that leave their networks exposed every day. A firewall and an intrusion detection systems (IDS) are two important weapons in that fight, enabling you to proactively deny access and monitor network traffic for signs of an attack.

Linux Firewalls discusses the technical details of the iptables firewall and the Netfilter framework that are built into the Linux kernel, and it explains how they provide strong filtering, Network Address Translation (NAT), state tracking, and application layer inspection capabilities that rival many commercial tools. You'll learn how to deploy iptables as an IDS with psad and fwsnort and how to build a strong, passive authentication layer around iptables with fwknop.

Concrete examples illustrate concepts such as firewall log analysis and policies, passive network authentication and authorization, exploit packet traces, Snort ruleset emulation, and more with coverage of these topics:

Linux consistently appears high up in the list of popular Internet servers, whether it's for the Web, anonymous FTP, or general services such as DNS and delivering mail. But security is the foremost concern of anyone providing such a service. Any server experiences casual probe attempts dozens of time a day, and serious break-in attempts with some frequency as well.

This highly regarded book, originally titled Building Secure Servers with Linux, combines practical advice with a firm knowledge of the technical tools needed to ensure security. The book focuses on the most common use of Linux--as a hub offering services to an organization or the Internet--and shows readers how to harden their hosts against attacks. An all-inclusive resource for Linux users who wish to harden their systems, Linux Server Security covers general security such as intrusion detection and firewalling a hub, as well as key services such as DNS, the Apache Web server, mail, and secure shell.

Author Michael D. Bauer, a security consultant, network architect, and lead author of the popular Paranoid Penguin column in the Linux Journal, carefully outlines the security risks, defines precautions that can minimize those risks, and offers recipes for robust security. He is joined on several chapters by administrator and developer Bill Lubanovic.

A number of new security topics have been added for this edition, including:

• Database security, with a focus on MySQL
• Using OpenLDAP for authentication
• An introduction to email encryption
• The Cyrus IMAP service, a popular mail delivery agent
• The vsftpd FTP server

When Practical Unix Security was first published more than a decade ago, it became an instant classic. Crammed with information about host security, it saved many a Unix system administrator from disaster. The second edition added much-needed Internet security coverage and doubled the size of the original volume. The third edition is a comprehensive update of this very popular book - a companion for the Unix/Linux system administrator who needs to secure his or her organization's system, networks, and web presence in an increasingly hostile world.

Focusing on the four most popular Unix variants today--Solaris, Mac OS X, Linux, and FreeBSD--this book contains new information on PAM (Pluggable Authentication Modules), LDAP, SMB/Samba, anti-theft technologies, embedded systems, wireless and laptop issues, forensics, intrusion detection, chroot jails, telephone scanners and firewalls, virtual and cryptographic filesystems, WebNFS, kernel security levels, outsourcing, legal issues, new Internet protocols and cryptographic algorithms, and much more.

Practical Unix & Internet Security consists of six parts:

• Computer security basics: introduction to security problems and solutions, Unix history and lineage, and the importance of security policies as a basic element of system security.
• Security building blocks: fundamentals of Unix passwords, users, groups, the Unix filesystem, cryptography, physical security, and personnel security.
• Network security: a detailed look at modem and dialup security, TCP/IP, securing individual network services, Sun's RPC, various host and network authentication systems (e.g., NIS, NIS+, and Kerberos), NFS and other filesystems, and the importance of secure programming.
• Secure operations: keeping up to date in today's changing security world, backups, defending against attacks, performing integrity management, and auditing.
• Handling security incidents: discovering a break-in, dealing with programmed threats and denial of service attacks, and legal aspects of computer security.
• Appendixes: a comprehensive security checklist and a detailed bibliography of paper and electronic references for further reading and research.

Packed with 1000 pages of helpful text, scripts, checklists, tips, and warnings, this third edition remains the definitive reference for Unix administrators and anyone who cares about protecting their systems and data from today's threats.