If you are a UNIX system administrator or user who deals with security, you need this book. It's a practical guide that spells out your options for both Berkeley UNIX and System V. It's complete, rational, and doesn't require that you be a programmer to use it.
Practical UNIX Security describes the issues, approaches, and methods for implementing security measures, spelling out what the varying approaches cost and require in the way of equipment. After presenting UNIX security basics and network security, this guide goes on to suggest how to keep intruders out, how to tell if they've gotten in, how to clean up after them, and even how to prosecute them. Filled with practical scripts, tricks, and warnings, Practical UNIX Security tells you what you need to know to make your UNIX system as secure as it possibly can be.
Contents include:
Understanding basic UNIX functions, such as users, passwords, groups, superuser, and the file system.
Defending against security breaches.
Defending against network and communication breaches, using modems, UUCP, NFS, secure NFS, Kerberos, and firewall machines.
Handling break-ins or other security incidents and repairing the damage.
Applying techniques of encryption and physical security to UNIX.
Appendices: UNIX security checklist, important files, UNIX processes, how Kerberos works, other sources.
Our look is the result of reader comments, our own experimentation, and feedback from distribution channels. Distinctive covers complement our distinctive approach to technical topics, breathing personality and life into potentially dry subjects. The image featured on the cover of Practical UNIX Security is a safe. The concept of a safe has been with us for a long time. Methods for keeping valuables safely have been in use since the beginning of recorded history. The first physical structures that we think of as safes were developed by the Egyptians, Greeks and Romans. These early safes were simply wooden boxes. In the Middle Ages and Renaissance in Europe these wooden box safes started being reinforced with metal bands, and some were equipped with locks. The first of the all-metal safes was developed in France in 1820. UNIX and its attendant programs can be unruly beasts. Nutshell Handbooks(R) help you tame them.
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Edie Freedman designed this cover and the entire UNIX bestiary that appears on other Nutshell Handbooks. The images are adapted from 19th-century engravings from the Dover Pictorial Archive.
The text of this book is set in Times Roman; headings are Helvetica; examples are Courier. Text was prepared using SortQuad's sqtroff text formatter. Figures are produced with a Macintosh. Printing is done on a Tegra Varityper 5000.
