Reviews of IT Auditing, Hacking Exposed: VoIP, and Hacking Exposed: Wireless Posted

I am happy to report that I just posted three book reviews to Amazon.com. The first is IT Auditing by Chris Davis, Mike Schiller, and Kevin Wheeler. From the four star review:

I have no experience with auditing in the formal sense described by IT Auditing. I am familiar with the technical aspects of host and network security, but I wanted to know more about the goals and views of those who audit enterprises from a security standpoint. IT Auditing succeeds when it discusses the profession of auditing but I found some of the technical details lacking. Therefore, I recommend focusing on chapters 1-3 and 12-15, while using the technical chapters as indicators for outside research.

The second book is Hacking Exposed: VoIP by David Endler and Mark Collier. This book is so much better than Practical VoIP Security it's not even funny. From my five star review:

Hacking Exposed: VoIP (HE:V) is the sort of HE book I like. It's fashionable to think HE books are only suitable for script kiddies who run tools they don't understand against vulnerable services they don't recognize. I like HE books because the good ones explain a technology from a security standpoint, how to exploit it, and how to defend it. I thought HE:V did well in all three areas, even featuring original research and experiments to document and validate the authors' claims.

The last book is Hacking Exposed: Wireless by Johnny Cache and Vincent Liu. Both are great guys, but I wrote a four star review:

When I read and reviewed Wi-Foo: The Secrets of Wireless Hacking three years ago, I was really impressed. Wi-Foo is obviously showing its age now, but a second edition is in the works. I was excited to see Hacking Exposed: Wireless (HE:W), green cover and all, because I hoped it would be just as good as Wi-Foo but covering newer topics. Overall I think the next Wi-Foo will be better than HE:W, but HE:W is currently the most up-to-date book on wireless security available.

I have more flying in store this and next month, so I expect to read and review many more books soon.

Comments

Unknown said…
I'm still trying to learn why the cover of the Wireless book is green. I thought it might have to do with the more specialized topic, which required more "background" info like describing what 802.11x was, and all that jazz including the physics. Either way, I've been pretty happy and jazzed reading through HE:W, which I'm currently in the middle of.

I agree, I have high expectations of Wi-Foo II. Wi-Foo came out when you couldn't deal with wireless security without wrestling pretty hardcore with nix support and drivers, making the start very muddy for everyone.
5:07 PM
Anonymous said…
Richard, thanks for the kind comments about our Hacking Exposed: VoIP book. Looking forward to meeting and chatting some time.

Mark Collier
4:54 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