Best Book Bejtlich Read in 2012

It's time to name the winner of the Best Book Bejtlich Read award for 2012!

I started seriously reading and reviewing digital security books in 2000. This is the 7th time I've formally announced a winner; see my bestbook label for previous winners.

I posted yesterday that 2012 was the year I changed what I read. For example, in 2011 I read and reviewed 22 technical books. In 2012, which a change in my interests, I only read and reviewed one technical book. Thankfully, it was a five star book, which means it is my BBBR 2012 winner!

As you might have figured out yesterday, this year's winner is SSH Mastery by Michael W Lucas. Feel free to read my Amazon.com review for details. Note that I bought a Kindle version from Amazon.com, and later MWL mailed me a print copy.

Besides the excellent style and content, one of the reasons I read the book was to experience MWL's first release of a self-published technical book. I think it was a successful endeavor, although I'm not prepared to try that route myself anytime soon.

If I were to name my favorite non-technical book I read in 2012, it would be For the President's Eyes Only: Secret Intelligence and the American Presidency from Washington to Bush by Christopher Andrew. I enjoyed learning more about American history through the eyes of the intel world, but I was shocked by how poorly most presidents understood and (mis)used intelligence.

I'm probably done reading and reviewing technical books, so I consider this to be the final BBBR post. I have over 100 possible (mainly nontechnical) books to read on my Kindle now (in Sample form), but I doubt I will review them when done.

Good luck reading in 2013!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Zeek in Action Videos

Image
This is a quick note to point blog readers to my Zeek in Action YouTube video series for the Zeek network security monitoring project .  Each video addresses a topic that I think might be of interest to people trying to understand their network using Zeek and adjacent tools and approaches, like Suricata, Wireshark, and so on.  I am especially pleased with Video 6 on monitoring wireless networks . It took me several weeks to research material for this video. I had to buy new hardware and experiment with a Linux distro that I had not used before -- Parrot .  Please like and subscribe, and let me know if there is a topic you think might make a good video.
Read more

MITRE ATT&CK Tactics Are Not Tactics

Image
Just what are "tactics"? Introduction MITRE ATT&CK  is a great resource, but something about it has bothered me since I first heard about it several years ago. It's a minor point, but I wanted to document it in case it confuses anyone else. The MITRE ATT&CK Design and Philosophy document from March 2020 says the following: At a high-level, ATT&CK is a behavioral model that consists of the following core components: • Tactics, denoting short-term, tactical adversary goals during an attack; • Techniques, describing the means by which adversaries achieve tactical goals; • Sub-techniques, describing more specific means by which adversaries achieve tactical goals at a lower level than techniques; and • Documented adversary usage of techniques, their procedures, and other metadata. My concern is with MITRE's definition of "tactics" as "short-term, tactical adversary goals during an attack," which is oddly recursive. The key word in the tacti...
Read more

New Book! The Best of TaoSecurity Blog, Volume 4

Image
  I've completed the TaoSecurity Blog book series . The new book is  The Best of TaoSecurity Blog, Volume 4: Beyond the Blog with Articles, Testimony, and Scholarship .  It's available now for Kindle , and I'm working on the print edition.  I'm running a 50% off promo on Volumes 1-3 on Kindle through midnight 20 April. Take advantage before the prices go back up. I described the new title thus: Go beyond TaoSecurity Blog with this new volume from author Richard Bejtlich. In the first three volumes of the series, Mr. Bejtlich selected and republished the very best entries from 18 years of writing and over 18 million blog views, along with commentaries and additional material.  In this title, Mr. Bejtlich collects material that has not been published elsewhere, including articles that are no longer available or are stored in assorted digital or physical archives. Volume 4 offers early white papers that Mr. Bejtlich wrote as a network defender, either for technica...
Read more