Product Description

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: Passive network authentication and OS fingerprinting iptables log analysis and policies Application layer attack detection with the iptables string match extension Building an iptables ruleset that emulates a Snort ruleset Port knocking vs. Single Packet Authorization (SPA) Tools for visualizing iptables logs Perl and C code snippets offer practical examples that will help you to maximize your deployment of Linux firewalls. If you're responsible for keeping a network secure, you'll find Linux Firewalls invaluable in your attempt to understand attacks and use iptables-along with psad and fwsnort-to detect and even prevent compromises.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #321814 in Books
• Published on: 2007-09-25
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 336 pages

About the Author
Michael Rash is a Security Architect on the Dragon Intrusion Detection System with Enterasys Networks, Inc., and is a frequent contributor to open source projects. As the creator of psad, fwknop, and fwsnort, Rash is an expert on firewalls, IDSs, OS fingerprinting, and the Snort rules language. He is co-author of the book Snort 2.1 Intrusion Detection, lead-author and technical editor of the book Intrusion Prevention and Active Response, and has written security articles for Linux Journal, SysAdmin, and ;login:.

Customer Reviews

Nice, accurate and interesting. Not like other books about firewalls.
When I bought "Linux Firewalls" I was expecting a good book because I already knew that the work of Michael Rash is excellent. However, I expected the traditional Iptables handbook that looks more like a "man page". Surprisingly I found that the book was much better than that. Instead of detailing every single feature of the Iptables infrastructure, Michael Rash explains how Iptables can be used as a powerful (and free) Intrusion Detection/Prevention System. To achieve that, Rash presents three open source tools developed by himself: psad, an iptables-based port scan detector, fwsnort, a tool that translates snort rules into iptables sentences, and fwknop, a Port Knocking and SPA authentication system.

The book is very practical. It's amazing how everything is presented so clearly and with such useful examples. The author first introduces the potential threats that are associated with the Network Layer, Transport Layer and Application Layer (I loved those chapters). Then he starts discussing the detection of malicious attackers that try to break into the system. Finally he presents active response mechanisms against attackers and ways to secure the whole system with additional layers of security.

The book is great if what you want is to secure your Linux system using IPtables and the open source tools developed by Rash. Rash is an expert on firewalls and intrusion detection systems. If you follow his suggestions you'll build a very secure system. Firewall enthusiasts and TCP/IP fans will also enjoy reading the book because its written by a geek and its written for geeks. However, if you are looking for an Iptables handbook, you are looking for a theoretical book about Firewalls or you want to use other tools than the ones presented in the book, then "Linux Firewalls" may not be the best option for you.