Practical UNIX & Internet Security

by Simson Garfinkel, Gene Spafford

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 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.

Genres: Technical, Reference, Computers, Nonfiction, Computer Science, Programming, Technology

1004 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1991

Reviews

[Sofie Giocante · Rating 5 out of 5]

Invaluable advice and very well written.

[Den Ponsky]

A must-read for every programmer! Most of the books teach you how to program, or how to use your specific language features, but none of them will teach you how to actually write clean and maitnainable code. This one does!

[Jon · Rating 3 out of 5]

I expected this to be a bit out of date, of course (1996 edition!) but I was surprised how timeless a lot of the advice is. A very comprehensive book, covering a lot of basic Unix sysadmin topics where they touch on security, and sadly that has not aged as well as the general principles. So it's a weird mix and if there were a fourth edition, I'd be picking it up. Since the third came out in 2003, though, I suspect they're not going to go for it, instead leaving the field to more specific topical books.

[Athanasios · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is out of date by now and superseded by more topical books. When I first read it back in 1996 however, it was one of the few security references out there. Give it a read for historical value, it will help you to understand simultaneously how far we have come on one hand and how common attacks originated (which is sad really). It is really well written.

[TK Keanini · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is nearly 2 inches thick. It is still useful as most of UNIX still has the same security model. At the very least, if you are serious about security, you will want to have read it because you will want to know how things began and therefor how they have evolved (for better or worse)

[Joel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Probably the driest book I've ever read. On the other hand, this book makes some excelent points, including how important Backups are to computer security.

[Barry Alexander · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you want a fairly comprehensive overview of security principles on the Linux platform, this is a good book to start with. It is a tad dated in some places, but overall still relevant.

[Doug]

Recommended by Jeremy Zawodny in High Performance MySQL.