Mini-Review of The Book of Pf Posted

Because I wrote a three star review of the first edition of The Book of Pf by Peter N.M. Hansteen, Amazon.com won't allow me to write a review of the second edition. So, I added the following comment to my old review indicating that I think the second edition deserves four out of five stars:

Amazon won't allow me to write a review of the second edition of this book, so I'm adding this comment. I'm pleased to say that I believe the author accepted much of the feedback in my first review as well as feedback from other reviewers. He's improved the book so much that I think it warrants 4 out of 5 stars. He spends more time explaining key concepts rather than simply including them in the text. For example, the author introduces features like macros (p 18) whereas in the first edition he just started using them. The book is also fairly up-to-date, with coverage of OpenBSD 4.8, FreeBSD 8.1, and NetBSD 5.0. Reading how to use Pf on all three platforms was very helpful. One request for a future edition is to include more "tips and tricks" that an experienced firewall administrator is sure to have. For example, when working remotely on a firewall ruleset, what methods does the author use to test configurations and ensure that if he makes a mistake he isn't locked out of the system? Finally, I think this book is a fine companion to PfSense: The Definitive Guide by Buechler and Pingle.

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 technical or pol
Read more