Computer & Internet Security: A Hands-on Approach

by Wenliang Du

Teaching computer and network security principles via hands-on activities
Unique among computer security texts, the Second Edition of the Computer & Internet A Hands-on Approach builds on the author’s long tradition of teaching this complex subject through a hands-on approach. For each security principle, the book uses a series of hands-on activities to help explain the principle; readers can "touch", play with, and experiment with the principle, instead of just reading about it. The hands-on activities are based on the author's widely adopted SEED Labs , which have been used by over 1000 institutes in more than 65 countries.

Topics covered in the book
- Software attacks and countermeasures
- Web attacks and countermeasures
- Network attacks on TCP/IP and DNS
- Packet sniffing and spoofing
- Firewall and Virtual Private Network (VPN)
- Newly discovered attacks, including Meltdown and Spectre attacks on CPUs, Dirty COW, Shellshock, Heartbleed, Hash collision, etc.
- Common hacking and defense techniques
- Cryptography, PKI, and TLS programming
- Bitcoin and Blockchain

687 pages, Paperback

Published May 1, 2019

Reviews

[Julia S. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Totally worthwhile.

[Mick Petzold · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is very good. I appreciate the in-depth detail provided, showing how computer attacks work, and the use of virtual machines to actually perform the attacks ourselves. I especially enjoyed the Reverse Shell chapter having performed this myself without a good understanding of how it actually works. The book takes great effort in explaining how and why it works when setting up a backdoor using this approach.