Review ofThe Database Hacker's Handbook Posted

Amazon.com just posted my four star review of The Database Hacker's Handbook by NGS Software members David Litchfield, Chris Anley, John Heasman, and Bill Grindlay. From the review:

The Database Hacker's Handbook (TDHH) is unique for two reasons. First, it is written by experts who spend their lives breaking database systems. Their depth of knowledge is unparalleled. Second, TDHH addresses security for Oracle, IBM DB2, IBM Informix, Sybase ASE, MySQL, Microsoft SQL Server, and PostgreSQL. No other database security book discusses as many products. For this reason, TDHH merits four stars. If a second edition of the book addresses some of my later suggestions, five stars should be easy to achieve.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Hi Richard,
Firstly, thanks for reading TDHH and writing the review, which has come at a most prescient time as I begin the groundwork for the Oracle Hacker's Handbook. Taking on board some of your comments, it makes sense to move the code online though it could be argued its presence in the book will help elucidate some of the points being made if you're reading on the beach... On balance, however, I think the code is better off being moved out of the book.

As far as the short chapters go it's probably because there wasn't much to say on that particular issue ;)

Implementing Database Security and Auditing by Ron Ben Natan is most definitely a great companion to TDHH - I have read it and commend it highly.

In conclusion ;), thanks again for taking the time to write the review and with TOHH I'll aim for the 5 stars.
Cheers,
David Litchfield
8:09 PM
Anonymous said…
I already had both books so your review (obviously) wasn't a purchasing factor. I think that your review is really on target with respect to both books. Now, I'll have to wait for "Database Security .." by Afyouni and see how it compares.
7:01 AM
Richard Bejtlich said…
David,

Nice to hear from you! I and many others look forward to your next books.

Thank you for your work.
3:29 PM
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 technical or pol
Read more