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Date: Sun, 10 Dec 2000 10:55:18 -0500
From: Book <book@cavu.com>
To: lwn@lwn.net
Subject: New Linux security book

Bob Toxen's book "Real World Linux Security: Intrusion Prevention,
Detection and Recovery" was published by Prentice Hall PTR on November 14
and is shipping from all of the usual places.

It offers a step-by-step way to secure Linux and UNIX systems.  It is
designed so that each step can be done separately, a little bit at a
time; I realize that a busy SysAdmin cannot simply take production
systems down for a week for "security upgrades".  Almost all steps can
be done on production systems without rebooting or even disrupting
current services.  Each vulnerability and security improvement is marked
with from one to five "skull and cross bones" to indicate how severe a
problem it is.

He spends 60,000 words on how to detect attacks and recover from successful
attacks in minutes instead of hours or days.  The recognition that no
system is 100% secure and that a good system administrator will be
prepared for a break-in is unique among security books.

It covers the "Seven Deadly Sins of Linux Security", the nitty-gritty
of securing the Apache web server, Sendmail, and FTP, quickly detecting and
alerting the system administrator (via pager) if one's web pages are defaced
or an attack is initiated, and so much more.

It takes the reader through building, installing, and using TCP Wrappers,
IP Chains, the Secure Shell (ssh), the GNU version of PGP, Tripwire, the
Deception Tool Kit, and many other important tools.

Most of the problems raised in Bruce Schneier's new book, "Secrets and
Lies: Digital Security in a Networked World", are addressed in my book
and solutions are offered and explained.

The foreword is by Eric Raymond, one of the best-known Linux advocates.
Eric starts his foreword with:

  "You have in your hands a book I've been waiting to read for years -- a
  practical, hands-on guide to hardening your Linux system which also
  manages to illuminate the larger issues in Unix security and computer
  security in general."

Steve Bourne (who created the Bourne shell for UNIX and who was one of the
original Bell Labs UNIX researchers) provides the cover quote:

  "A comprehensive guide to system security - covers everything from
  hardening a system to system recovery after an attack."

The book is 700 pages with a CD-ROM of some of the tools I created as
well as lots of open source tools.

There's more info on it at http://www.realworldlinuxsecurity.com/ and Prentice
Hall's publicist, Christy_Schaack@prenhall.com, should be contacted to provide
a review copy of the book.  It's available for advance order on Amazon and
will be available by the end of November from all of the usual places,
including Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Borders, www.fatbrain.com, and
www.softpro.com.

ISBN 0-13-028187-5

About the author

As an undergraduate at Berkeley in the late 1970s, he learned about
security by breaking into the UNIX systems there, successfully evading such
system administrators as Jeff Schriebmann, Bill Joy, and Bob Kridle;
they later founded UniSoft, Sun, and Mt. Xinu.  Bob is one of the 162
recognized developers of Berkeley UNIX.

He was one of the four developers who did the initial port of UNIX to the
Silicon Graphics hardware and has hacked the kernel of a C2-compliant secure
UNIX system.

Bob was the architect of the client/server system that NASA's Kennedy Space
Center uses to communicate with the 3000 PCs used to store and retrieve
the 900 GB of documents pertaining to Space Shuttle Payloads.
He was the UNIX System Administrator for the Americas
Computer Center for one of the world's largest shipping companies.

Bob was the architect for the server controlling a popular Linux-based
Network Disk appliance, the Netgear ND508 and ND520.  Mr. Toxen wrote
"The Problem Solver" column for UNIX Review magazine and has given many
classes on Linux and UNIX.

He created the Sunset Computer at http://www.cavu.com/sunset.html, used
by hundreds of thousands of people around the world to determine sunrise
and sunset and local time.  (Even "Ask Jeeves" recommends it.) These
include private, commercial, and military pilots, air traffic
controllers, photographers, the U.S. Army for planning maneuvers,
hunters and game wardens, truckers, and police officers.

He has used eBay only once, to bid on and purchase his Rolls-Royce
that now sports a "LINUX" front license tag.

The book was technically reviewed by:

     Kurt Seifried, Sr. analyst, SecurityPortal.com
     Michael Warfield, Sr. Wizard X-Force, Internet Security Systems
     Larry Gee, Architect, ApplianceWare
     Stephen Friedl, Consultant
     Mike O'Shaughnessy, Quarry Technologies
     Dr. Indira Moyer, Consultant

Bob lives in Atlanta, GA, where he is president and CTO of Fly-By-Day
Consulting, Inc., which offers consulting services in Linux and UNIX
security, client/server creation, system administration, porting, and
general network-oriented C programming -- done right the first time.

Best regards,

Bob Toxen
bob@cavu.com
+1 770-662-8321 (10 am-10 pm in U.S. Eastern Time Zone)
+1 404-216-5100 (Cell phone)
http://www.realworldlinuxsecurity.com/ [My new book: Real World Linux Security]
http://www.cavu.com/
http://www.cavu.com/sunset.html/       [Sunset Computer]
Fly-By-Day Consulting, Inc.      "Don't go with a fly-by-night outfit!"
Atlanta, GA
Quality Linux & UNIX security and software consulting since 1990.

GPG Public key available at http://www.cavu.com/pubkey.txt (book@cavu.com)
pub  1024D/E3A1C540 2000-06-21 Bob Toxen <book@cavu.com>
     Key fingerprint = 30BA AA0A 31DD B68B 47C9  601E 96D3 533D E3A1 C540
sub  2048g/03FFCCB9 2000-06-21