Books
Steganography (found 55 titles)
Author: Jessica FridrichPublisher: Cambridge University Press
Publication date: 2009-12-21
ISBN: 0521190193
Pages: 462
Price: $85.00
Steganography, the art of hiding of information in apparently innocuous objects or images, is a field with a rich heritage, and an area of rapid current development. This clear, self-contained guide shows you how to understand the building blocks of covert communication in digital media files and how to apply the techniques in practice, including those of steganalysis, the detection of steganography. Assuming only a basic knowledge in calculus and statistics, the book blends the various strands of steganography, including information theory, coding, signal estimation and detection, and statistical signal processing. Experiments on real media files demonstrate the performance of the techniques in real life, and most techniques are supplied with pseudo-code, making it easy to implement the algorithms. The book is ideal for students taking courses on steganography and information hiding, and is also a useful reference for engineers and practitioners working in media security and information assurance.
Authors: Ingemar Cox, Matthew Miller, Jeffrey Bloom, Jessica Fridrich, Ton KalkerPublisher: Morgan Kaufmann
Publication date: 2007-11-27
ISBN: 0123725852
Pages: 624
Price: $87.95
Digital audio, video, images, and documents are flying through cyberspace to their respective owners. Unfortunately, along the way, individuals may choose to intervene and take this content for themselves. Digital watermarking and steganography technology greatly reduces the instances of this by limiting or eliminating the ability of third parties to decipher the content that he has taken. The many techiniques of digital watermarking (embedding a code) and steganography (hiding information) continue to evolve as applications that necessitate them do the same. The authors of this second edition provide an update on the framework for applying these techniques that they provided researchers and professionals in the first well-received edition. Steganography and steganalysis (the art of detecting hidden information) have been added to a robust treatment of digital watermarking, as many in each field research and deal with the other. New material includes watermarking with side information, QIM, and dirty-paper codes. The revision and inclusion of new material by these influential authors has created a must-own book for anyone in this profession.
*This new edition now contains essential information on steganalysis and steganography
*New concepts and new applications including QIM introduced
*Digital watermark embedding is given a complete update with new processes and applications
Authors: Eric Cole, Sandra RingPublisher: Syngress
Publication date: 2006-03-15
ISBN: 1597490482
Pages: 350
Rating:
Price: $36.95
The Secret Service, FBI, NSA, CERT (Computer Emergency Response Team) and George Washington University have all identified "Insider Threats" as one of the most significant challenges facing IT, security, law enforcement, and intelligence professionals today.
This book will teach IT professional and law enforcement officials about the dangers posed by insiders to their IT infrastructure and how to mitigate these risks by designing and implementing secure IT systems as well as security and human resource policies. The book will begin by identifying the types of insiders who are most likely to pose a threat. Next, the reader will learn about the variety of tools and attacks used by insiders to commit their crimes including: encryption, steganography, and social engineering. The book will then specifically address the dangers faced by corporations and government agencies. Finally, the reader will learn how to design effective security systems to prevent insider attacks and how to investigate insider security breeches that do occur.
Throughout the book, the authors will use their backgrounds in the CIA to analyze several, high-profile cases involving insider threats.
* Tackles one of the most significant challenges facing IT, security, law enforcement, and intelligence professionals today
* Both co-authors worked for several years at the CIA, and they use this experience to analyze several high-profile cases involving insider threat attacks
* Despite the frequency and harm caused by insider attacks, there are no competing books on this topic.books on this topic
Customes reviews 11
Insider Threat - what to do - for the risks we all face (2009-07-07)
I bought this book to learn about the latest structured thinking - on the risks in our system, and what can be done about them. Even if the risk mitigation was perhaps not an effective return for all situations.
This book is well organized, and brings out the challenges we face - with a real face. It covers technology, process, and people risks, and provides risk mitigation strategies as suggestions, which works well.
Well worth the time and money.
5 stars if you're doing a research paper & need a book for a reference (2009-06-10)
This book is an easy read and served me well in my research paper on the cyber threat of the authorized insider. Eric Cole is a credentialed and excellent source on this topic. While I had textbooks that also discussed this, they did not go into the detail that this book did. A great source for those pursuing degrees in Information Assurance.
Insider Threat-The Right Focus (2008-05-05)
Frankly, this book does a great job addressesing major problem. Companies must be aware of and manage risk to economic, sensitive and classified information espionage. I have to say that Sandra Ring and Dr. Cole have it right on. Security Manager focus should be on the insider threat.
I have had the opportunity to hear one of the authors speak at a recent security event. The speaker correctly addressed that the largest security threat to any company is from the insider-the one with all the access.
A cyber or network catastrophe is one disgruntled employee away. The speaker gave example after example of former employees who felt both an ownership of the product and a significant employer betrayer. This and their access to sensitive information have allowed and opportunity to steal customer information, sabotage networks or software, or sell data to competing companies.
They recommend rightly that Security managers should focus efforts on protecting proprietary and identity revealing information. This protection should include protecting trade secrets, establishing good termination procedures, learning to recognized disgruntled employees, use password protection and realizing that with networks and internet, an outside threat could easily become an inside threat.
I look forward to learning more from this book and applying it to my business.
Interesting read (2006-11-15)
Books on insider threats are hard to find, and this one does a good job detailing the issue. The first chapter was full of great content.
AN INSIDE JOB!! (2006-10-22)
Do you know how to prevent employees and contractors from stealing your corporate data? If you don't, then this book is for you. Authors Eric Cole and Sandra Ring, have done an outstanding job of writing a book that shows you how to protect your enterprise from sabotage, spying and theft.
Cole and Sandra Ring, begin with an introduction on how bad the insider threat problem really is and why you should be concerned about it. Then, the authors cover a wide range of technologies and methods that can be used by an insider to cause harm to a company. Next, they discuss unique insider threats to state and local government institutions. The authors continue by drawing your attention to the fact that insiders within the federal government do not just commit espionage. They also discuss various threats to information, such as sabotage and theft, the impact of these actions to the reputation and financial health of organizations, and describe several real-life case studies involving well-known commercial companies. Next, the authors highlight the threat of identity theft and what institutions can do to help prevent insiders from participating in fraud rings. The authors also focus on insider threats from government contractors. Then, they do a profile of insider threats. The authors continue by showing you how to respond to problem of insider threat by looking at technologies and concepts that can be used to control and limit the damage that insiders can perform. Finally, they examine how a company goes about surviving an insider threat and increasing their defenses over time to minimize the amount of damage it will cause.
This most excellent book will show you why internal threats are exponentially more dangerous that external threats. More importantly, this book will show you how to protect your most important intellectual property assets.
Authors: Eric ColePublisher: Wiley
Publication date: 2002-05-27
ISBN:
Pages: 360
Rating:
Price: $35.00
* Explains exactly what steganography is-hiding a message inside an innocuous picture or music file-and how it has become a popular tool for secretly sending and receiving messages for both the good guys and the bad guys
* First book to describe international terrorists' cybersecurity tool of choice in an accessible language
* Author is a top security consultant for the CIA and provides gripping stories that show how steganography works
* Appendix provides tools to help people detect and counteract stenanography
Customes reviews 13
awesome book. (2005-06-01)
this is the best book on Steganography out there.
cole has a ton of great info.
Discover The Art of Hiding Data (2005-02-10)
Not knowing much other than the definition of steganography before opening this book I found it very easy to read and very informative.
Eric Cole has a background in working with hidden data and his experience is translated into a book that even users new to the concepts of covert communication can understand. The fictionalized stories of actual events help the reader to understand how these tools are used every day by both the good guys and the bad guys.
The book covers a basic history and background of cryptography and digital watermarking as well as steganography and then gets into more detail about the techniques and concepts of "stego". It does provide source code, but may not be "meaty" enough for steganography experts.
(...)
Good, but basic, and the editor should be fired. (2004-12-24)
The information is quite good, though not very in depth. The examples are good, as they explain, "See, this really *can* be used in 'real life'." There is also some programming information, so for some parts (nothing critical, just program design), a knowledge of C is useful. Personally, this is my first book on steganography, so the technicality of the information was at a good level (informative, but not buried in jargon or advanced math). I have no programming background, but skipping the program designs was not a detriment in any way.
However... I think the editor should be bludgeoned once or twice with something heavy. I have written some documentation, and the editor did things that I know never to do. First, there are a few grammatical errors, which cause serious problems if you are not paying attention. (In one example, it is said the user (I don't have the book in front of me) "attaches her private PGP key, encrypts it with [the other's] public PGP key, and sends the email". This is after saying many times "NEVER EVER SHARE YOUR PRIVATE PGP KEY!!!". Then, the example goes on to say the recipient "uses the public PGP key, which is attached...". (The first sentence should have read "public PGP key"). In addition to one or two other situations like this, there is also an issue with the inline images. They all appear only at the top and bottom of the page, while the author clearly intends for some to be in paragraphs. The author says things like "as seen in this image:", but the sentence continues, and "this image", the number of which is not given, is elsewhere on the page. Further, many images have the eight resize anchor points and thick border visible from screen shots; these should have been Photoshop'ed out (it's not that hard, I've done it with Paintbrush).
If you are looking for advanced work, skip this. For a basic work, I would give it five stars, but the editors errors are so bad....
Silly editing mistakes and empty information. (2004-09-01)
Call me silly for expecting more from this. This book rollercoasters from the wildly vague overview to the distractingly specific detail and back again. The author shows promise in writing style but the editing needs some work. Typos and silly mistakes like the majority of the second half of the book's images appear taken from a Word document (or similar) while selected (border, drag handles overlayed) and LOTS of white space.
And how useful is 80 pages of printed source code? The CD is included, just save the trees and my shelf space please.
The author is a seemingly public figure (TV show appearances, etc) so I guess you can only expect so much.
If you're looking for meat on the topic, don't bother. If you want a basic overview in a weekend read, go for it.
An excellent book on steganography (2004-05-28)
First of all I would like to congratulate you on finishing the amazing book "Hiding in plain sight". It is really a state of art. You really covered the major part of steganography if not all. I really enjoyed reading your book.
Looking forward to your next publication.
Authors: Peter WaynerPublisher: Elsevier Science (reference)
Publication date: 2008-12-01
ISBN:
Pages: 456
Rating:
Price: $59.95
A Morgan Kaufmann Publishers Kindle Book.
Customes reviews 6
Accessible introduction to a fascinating topic (2006-08-12)
This is a very easy read that does not really assume much about the reader other than mathematical maturity at the precalculus level, knowledge of programming in a higher level language, and a curiosity about hiding information in such things as images. In fact, I bought this book to get a grasp on how to hide a watermark in an image. The early chapters are devoted to material that forms the basic toolkit for steganography - private key encryption, secret sharing, and error correcting codes. The later chapters describe how to apply these techniques in various ways to hide information.
Chapter 5 discusses common data compression algorithms, not to the point that you could write an encoder/decoder system, but so that you know which allow perfect reconstruction and which do not. Compression leads to the topic of mimicry, which is the subject of chapter 6. Basic mimicry produces text that looks statistically similar to the original text but is far from perfect. Chapter 7 shows methods of improving mimicry techniques so that the mimicked text not only passes statistical tests for similarity to the original, but passes rules for grammar. This leads to the concept of context free grammars and their role in mimicry. Thus, you can hide data in realistic sounding text.
Chapter 8 concentrates on a robust and complete model known as the Turing machine. Such a machine hides data as it "runs forward", while running the machine in reverse allows the hidden data to be recovered. Certain proofs show that this is a stronger data hiding model than those previously discussed.
Chapter nine discusses a more image-processing related data hiding topic - hiding in the noise. What appears as noise to the untrained eye can actually be a message. Of course, the flip side of this is "real" noise has the power to obscure the hidden message.
Chapter 10 discusses anonymous remailers, which is the deletion of the name of the originator of a message by an intermediate node. Such systems can range from very secure to very insecure depending on strategies involved. Chapter 11,"Secret Broadcasts", is a companion chapter on how to broadcast a message so that everyone can read it but nobody knows the source. The solution lies in the "Dining Cryptographers" algorithm, and this solution is discussed at length.
Chapter 12, "Keys", discusses message keys as extensions to the concept of keys in basic cryptography, which was discussed earlier in the book. Adding keys to any algorithm discussed up to this point makes that algorithm stronger. Chapter 13, "Ordering and Reordering", discusses how steganography strategies might be disrupted by reordering parts of a message, and discusses methods that might prevent this from being a problem.
Chapter 14, "Spreading", is a more mathematical chapter than the preceding ones and takes a different approach to the problem of information hiding. It takes ideas from spread spectrum radio and applies them to steganography. This is the one chapter where a knowledge of calculus, Fourier transforms, and even wavelets will be helpful.
The last three chapters, "Synthetic Worlds", "Watermarks", and "Steganalysis" are short and more subjective than previous ones, mainly giving the reader a broad overview of these topics.
The book has a wealth of algorithms, equations, and simple examples. There is even a very basic Java mimicry program in the appendix. However, this is not a programming book full of ready to implement solutions - you will have to do that yourself. There are numerous references to web addresses where you can find both executable and source code for implementing some of the algorithms mentioned in this book. I would say if you are interested in hiding information in data of any kind - text, sound, imagery, etc. - then this book is essential reading. I highly recommend it.
One year after purchase, I keep opening this book (2003-08-18)
All in all just a fascinating book on a fascinating topic. In general, the introductory parts of each chapter are accessible to anyone with a standard 12 year education. The mathematics are best understood by people with a background in algebra and statistics at the American High School level, but not much more. If you buy this book, expect John Ashcroft to put your name on a list of people buying dangerous published works (and with the Patriot Act in place, I am neither paranoid nor joking). The best chapter is the one about encoding information in ordered lists. This book taught me how to include a one line hidden message in a 50 item list of my favorite Country and Western Songs of all time (and THAT is a cool thing to do).
Excelent book (2003-02-12)
I read the entire book from first to last page and enjoyed the content absolutely. The book has theory and practice, clear examples and many references to free and open source software to make tests. The math part has razonable level (not too much, not to little). I have no found anything better in the area.
Good for Peter Wayner!
P.D. ...
You know you are a crypto geek when.... (2002-09-30)
This book is a great introduction to learning how to hide data in places most people wouldn't think about looking. Sample code and various URL's are provided for places to start, this not the easiest subject to grasp, but the book helps put it at a manageable level.
A great place to start!...
Cool, deep, although a bit goofy (2002-06-15)
This is a deep, serious book about making information transmogrify, even if there are a few silly parts. I liked the funny parts and they reminded me of Goedel Escher and Bach
Authors: Jack Wiles, Johnny Long, Russ Rogers, Ron GreenPublisher: Syngress
Publication date: 2007-03-26
ISBN: 1597491381
Pages: 430
Price: $62.95
"This book contains some of the most up-to-date information available anywhere on a wide variety of topics related to Techno Security. As you read the book, you will notice that the authors took the approach of identifying some of the risks, threats, and vulnerabilities and then discussing the countermeasures to address them. Some of the topics and thoughts discussed here are as new as tomorrow's headlines, whereas others have been around for decades without being properly addressed. I hope you enjoy this book as much as we have enjoyed working with the various authors and friends during its development." -Donald Withers, CEO and Cofounder of TheTrainingCo.
. Jack Wiles, on Social Engineering offers up a potpourri of tips, tricks, vulnerabilities, and lessons learned from 30-plus years of experience in the worlds of both physical and technical security.
. Russ Rogers on the Basics of Penetration Testing illustrates the standard methodology for penetration testing: information gathering, network enumeration, vulnerability identification, vulnerability exploitation, privilege escalation, expansion of reach, future access, and information compromise.
. Johnny Long on No Tech Hacking shows how to hack without touching a computer using tailgating, lock bumping, shoulder surfing, and dumpster diving.
. Phil Drake on Personal, Workforce, and Family Preparedness covers the basics of creating a plan for you and your family, identifying and obtaining the supplies you will need in an emergency.
. Kevin O'Shea on Seizure of Digital Information discusses collecting hardware and information from the scene.
. Amber Schroader on Cell Phone Forensics writes on new methods and guidelines for digital forensics.
. Dennis O'Brien on RFID: An Introduction, Security Issues, and Concerns discusses how this well-intended technology has been eroded and used for fringe implementations.
. Ron Green on Open Source Intelligence details how a good Open Source Intelligence program can help you create leverage in negotiations, enable smart decisions regarding the selection of goods and services, and help avoid pitfalls and hazards.
. Raymond Blackwood on Wireless Awareness: Increasing the Sophistication of Wireless Users maintains it is the technologist's responsibility to educate, communicate, and support users despite their lack of interest in understanding how it works.
. Greg Kipper on What is Steganography? provides a solid understanding of the basics of steganography, what it can and can't do, and arms you with the information you need to set your career path.
. Eric Cole on Insider Threat discusses why the insider threat is worse than the external threat and the effects of insider threats on a company.
*Internationally known experts in information security share their wisdom
*Free pass to Techno Security Conference for everyone who purchases a book-$1,200 value
*2-HOUR DVD with cutting edge information on the future of information security
Publisher:
Publication date: 2010-08-15
ISBN:
Price: $2.00
This paper is a brief overview of the process of steganography and how it works. Included is a discussion of how it works, its value, detection, and tools available to perform the process.
Authors: Peter WaynerPublisher: CreateSpace
Publication date: 2009-01-08
ISBN: 1441421343
Pages: 220
Price: $45.00
This is the second edition of the widely acclaimed book that redefined how to build databases that protect the user's information. Instead of trying to store sensitive data in a tightly guarded box, the book describes simpler, faster and more secure solutions that leave the user in control of personal information. The trick to building a translucent database is scrambling the personal information in a way that only the right person can recover it. The book describes how traditional and not-so-traditional techniques can create a database that can answer questions for the right person without holding any useful information that might be abused by an insider or an attacker who manages to slip inside the fold. The second edition includes updated versions of the original material and four new chapters that tackle problems like secure and anonymous voting. All of the chapters include detailed descriptions of the algorithms and many descriptions include working code.
Authors: Neil R. Wyler, Bruce Potter, Chris HurleyPublisher: Syngress
Publication date: 2005-02-26
ISBN: 1931836205
Pages: 448
Rating:
Price: $51.95
Over the past year there has been a shift within the computer security world away from passive, reactive defense towards more aggressive, proactive countermeasures. Although such tactics are extremely controversial, many security professionals are reaching into the dark side of their tool box to identify, target, and suppress their adversaries. This book will provide a detailed analysis of the most timely and dangerous attack vectors targeted at operating systems, applications, and critical infrastructure and the cutting-edge counter-measures used to nullify the actions of an attacking, criminal hacker.
*First book to demonstrate and explore controversial network strike back and countermeasure techniques.
*Provides tightly guarded secrets to find out WHO is really attacking you over the internet.
*Provides security professionals and forensic specialists with invaluable information for finding and prosecuting criminal hackers.
Customes reviews 7
Interesting and helpful, but the legal ramifications still unclear (2006-09-18)
It is fair to say that most of the current strategies for network defense are passive, in that they involve setting up elaborate security shields to thwart or redirect intruders. The reason for this no doubt is that network administrators and IT departments do not want to face the legal consequences if they do as the authors of this book advocate, namely launching an attack on an intruder (human or otherwise) that will effectively disable it or at least frustrate it to a large degree. Interestingly though, the legal framework surrounding "aggressive" network self-defense is far from being clear. It would seem that existing laws on the books dealing with harassment and public nuisance would in fact support a large degree of "strike-back" network defense. The authors of this book seem to agree on this legal right, but the initial discussions in the book do illustrate the severe consequences that could arise if a security administrator were to take up the strike-back philosophy.
The weapons of aggressive self-defense include the PDA, which is discussed in the first chapter of the book, and which are described as being "easy to infect" by the author of the chapter. After bragging how he was able to compromise other people's PDA via the exchange of games, he discovered that his own PDA had been compromised by a key logger. He then describes how he found out exactly how he was infected, called naturally "computer forensics." To carry out the `reverse engineering' requires a debugger, a disassembler, and a hex editor. His discussion will be fascinating reading, especially those readers (such as this reviewer) who are not committed hackers or security specialists, but who need a good understanding of the issues in order to attempt to emulate them in more sophisticated, distributed computing environments. To get down to the assembly language after possibly many years of high-level programming is intoxicating to say the least. The author's analysis leads him to the conclusion that a backdoor FTP server running on port 69 (instead of the usual port 21). His plan was then to find out who installed the FTP server and then launch a reverse attack. The attack consisted of two phases, with the first one preventing the attacker from having access to his information and trick the attacker into downloading a file of his choice. The manner in which the author communicates convinces the reader that he knows what he is talking about. In order to know for sure one would have to go through the attack procedures as he organizes them. Unfortunately he author lost his job over his escapades, when instead he should have been rewarded for his ingenuity and skill. He was acting properly in taking action against an attack originally targeted to his machine.
The next chapter discusses an attack scenario in a common place these days: the cybercafe. The goal of the chapter is convince the reader to be wary of wireless hotspots that can easily be compromised. The author describes a scenario that actually began with criminal intent, and occurring in a WLAN environment, consisted of tricking users into logging into a person's own laptop. The author describes in detail what this person had to create and install on his laptop in order to pull off this deception, becoming the notorious "man-in-the-middle." He did this in order to obtain the credit card numbers of the customers who unwittingly logged into his machine instead of the correct access point. His scam was discovered and he was rightly arrested after he had run up over $10,000 in charges. But interestingly, his man-in-the-middle scam was detected by the WLAN administrator, and when this individual took it on himself to perform the investigation he attacked the scammer's machine and in the process broke some many laws that the evidence he collected was ruled inadmissible. The credit card companies sued the administrator since he nullified the federal case against the original scammer. Even though he won the case against him, his culpability is a grey area for sure, and this case reflects some of the ambiguities in digital law at the present time (both criminal and civil).
There are many more attack scenarios discussed in the book, all of which serve as tutorials in the many different tools that are have been exploited by both invaders and attackers. These include cache snooping, port knocking, TCPDump, Knoppix STD, Ethereal, Squid, honeypots, Sudo, cookie tracking, Trojan horses, keyloggers, Netcat, Nmap, PatriotBox, Traceroute, ping sweeping, IPSec rule injection, MD5 hashing, Stripwire, passive strike-back, and mass vulnerability scans. There is ample material here to educate oneself on how attacks can be accomplished and how therefore to defend systems against them. By far the most interesting part of the book though is the second one, since it goes into more of the conceptual background behind what the authors call `active defense.' They define this as an "action sequence performed between the time an attack is detected and the time it is known to be finished, in an automated or non-automated fashion, to mitigate a threat against a particular asset." This definition is one that is used in their model of network defense, which they call ADAM (Active Defense Algorithm and Model). The different steps to be taken, and the legal and ethical ramifications of ADAM are discussed in great detail. An interesting part of this discussion concerns the `scoring chart' that is used to compare the risk of a materializing threat with the risk of an active defense action. In addition, the calculation of risk is interesting in that it is similar to what is done in some areas of financial engineering.
A lively, satisfying book for all levels of computer user (2005-05-10)
Most computer security books focus on how to defend a computer system or network from outside attack: that's the basic difference between them and Neil R. Wylder's Aggressive Network Self-Defense: I'm Mad As Hell, And I'm Not Gonna Take It Anymore! The focus here is on the technical, legal and financial ramifications of a 'strike-back' and 'active defense' program which promotes doing more than just defense. Chapters cover 'cyber dogfights' between hackers and defender/attackers, offers up tales of revenge and following the trail of an attacker, accounts of fights at different network levels, and stories of problem-solving in network attacks. Both fictional and many real-life scenarios are covered, with plenty of technical computer detail. A lively, satisfying book for all levels of computer user, but particularly administrators who want to do more than just defend.
"Vigilante" Network Self-Defense (2005-04-20)
The title of this book says "Agressive." A better word might be "Vigilante."
I live in the west. Vigilante's came about because the law enforcement of the time was to weak to handle the problems. I don't know but that this is the situation out on the internet. I understand that CoolWebSearch is written/distributed from Russia. Who is going to go tell them that I don't want their stuff on my machine?
This book presents a series of "fictional" incidents where people being attacked strike back using technological means. Most of the time the police get involved at the end, usually finding the wrong man. None the less, the stories do an excellent job of describing how "aggressive" network defenders might attempt to strike back at attackers. These stories are certainly a more interesting approach than the typical computer manual.
The second part of the manual gets more technical and describes in greater depth the tools and techniques that the defenders in the fictional stories use.
The whole book brings up a series of moral questions. Where do you just build walls and defenses vs. where do you go out and counter-attack the attackers? Where are you counter-attacking illegally, with the potential to get caught yourself? It's quite a book and perhaps a sign of the coming times.
where do you stand on taking matters into your own hands? (2005-04-15)
Continuing in the new theme of fiction and technical how-to, Aggressive Network Self-Defense brings together several authors to provide a wide range of material. Syngress' niche in this space seems to be breaking new ground -- and for the most part, it works. While you don't get as in-depth a treatment as a typical technical book gives you, there is an added dimension: namely, a more realistic scenario of how these tools fit together in a real, live series of actions.
Not being a big fan of most fiction (I tend to prefer history), it's hard to say definitively good or bad things about the quality of the writing. What I can say is that it's infinitely less irritating, and far more realistic, than Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon or Gibson's Neuromancer. No over-the-top smearing of adjectives to describe the mundane, and no unrealistic sequences of events. Then again, there's no character development and no real story progression, so it's not great fiction.
As a series of hacker vignettes, the book works just fine, and very well for the purposes at hand. Basically, what the authors want you to get from the book is two-fold: First, they want you to debate the issues around "strike back" attack methodologies. Several of the authors are open advocates of what are legal grey areas and open moral questions in the field of network security. Secondly, they want you to see how it's done, what you do when you actually use a tool to achieve a goal. Most books that do this, like Hacking Exposed, cover far more tools, but they usually do so without showing you each tool's use in a real-world scenario.
I won't bore you with a lengthy, detailed overview of the first part of the book. Like I said, it's a series of part fiction, part tutorial series of short stories. In them, you'll see tools like Metasploit, virus creation, some nmap, sniffers, and keystroke loggers, all in action, being used as an operator would use them, and achieving real goals. This is more valuable than a basic manual, and the stories themselves act as a nice setting. While not great fiction writers, the authors are decent enough at the job, and they write the technical material clearly.
The second part of the book is interesting. It makes up about a fifth of the book in volume, but a lot more in technical weight. The book bills this section as "The technologies and concepts behind network strike-back," and that's an accurate summary. It's a series of four unique perspectives and technical chapters that complement the rest of the book quite well.
The first introduces ADAM, the "Active Defense Algorithm and Model," which develops a methodology for network administrators to actively defend their networks against attacks. It's quite interesting, and brings together a number of risk models in an uncommon take. The authors are academic researchers from the University of Idaho, so it's a lot more academic than the previous material in Aggressive Network Self-Defense, but it formalizes a lot of the thinking that was present in the writing of the stories and techniques.
The second is Tim Mullen's classic "Defending your right to defend." This is the original position paper shared by Mullen with the information security community in 2002 or so. Here, Mullen makes a compelling case for actually striking back at worm infected hosts. After all, the position holds, someone should do something about them to help clean up the Internet. While it's a position I disagreed with at the time and still do, Mullen's writing is articulate and an important read. It really helps you understand a lot of the thinking that went into the book itself.
Dan Kaminsky wrote the next chapter, "MD5 to be considered harmful someday." Largely considered to be a follow-on to Joux and Wang's one-way hash function research, what it shows is how practical such an attack can be. Kaminsky never fails to come up with interesting ideas he puts into practice, and he adds another level of depth to this book.
Finally, Aggressive Network Self-Defense ends with an interesting paper, "When the tables turn: Passive strike-back." Like any good paper, it has a clear and thoughtful motivation, and really demonstrates the principles at play, namely building network resources that don't simply lure the attacker in, they trip her up. There are so many ways to do this, the authors show us, and ultimately it's almost fun. A good way to end the book.
An over-arching concern with the book that I have is the question of ethics. Mullen, in the foreword, states that he hopes the book stirs a debate about the ethics of the actions in the book. However, the book itself falls short in this area. Instead, sometimes the characters get busted, and sometimes they don't, but just because they didn't get caught doesn't mean some ethical lines weren't crossed. All too often the authors leave the ethical debate up in the air. While I prefer this to overt preaching or questions, the style leaves me wondering if this goal was achieved.
So, where do I stand on Aggressive Network Self-Defense? In the end, I like it, more so than a book like Hacking Exposed or other "hacking how-to" types. The style of presentation doesn't lend itself all that well to exploring a very wide number of tools, but it does give you a deeper context to see how they assemble into something larger. For many people I expect it will be a page turner, and I think the format has some utility, as shown here.
sloppy prose, blurry figures (2005-04-11)
The book is riddled with sloppy prose that has not seen the attention of a careful editor. Throughout the book, most figures are annoying. They are screen or window captures. The authors chose the quick and dirty way of doing this and then pasting them into the text. But the resolution of the resultant printed images makes the contents out of focus. Yes, perhaps if you squint hard enought and interpolate, you can deduce the text. But this is what I mean. Annoying.
The chapters do offer amusing fictional plots that give tactics on both intruder and defender. Part of the appeal of the book is that these roles can switch. There are enough technical details supplied in the text to make the tactics credible to a computer person.
The discussion on the limitations of MD5 to a crafted collisions attack is well done. Very sneaky. Though still quite speculative, as the text rightfully points out.
The Strike Back chapter describes Armpit - a tool written as a "human detector". It is run as a daemon on a server. It permits access to resources only if the client browser can interpret Flash. This is seen as tantamount to implying that there is a human at the client, and not an automated attack tool, since most instances of the latter cannot do Flash. But this just begs the question. Surely if Armpit becomes common, it gives incentive for future attack tools to be able to run Flash? The narrative gives no technical reason why a cracker cannot take this logical countermeasure.
More importantly, the book fails to recognise that Armpit is a challenge response method. Those of you familiar with antispam ideas should realise this immediately. Plus, Mailblocks has a patent on challenge response. It would have been useful for the book to discuss whether this patent (or any others) could make any infringement claims against the company that wrote Armpit.
Authors: Karen BaileyPublisher: BookSurge Publishing
Publication date: 2005-06-14
ISBN: 159457667X
Pages: 118
Rating:
Price: $9.99
Steganography is a process which involves hiding a message in an appropriate carrier for example an image or an audio file. The carrier can then be sent to a receiver without anyone else knowing that it contains a hidden message. This is a process which can be used for example by civil rights organizations in repressive states to communicate their message to the outside world without their own government being aware of it. Less virtuously it can be used by terrorists to communicate with one another without anyone else's knowledge. In both cases the objective is not to make it difficult to read the message as cryptography does, it is to hide the existence of the message in the first place possibly to protect the courier. The aim of this book is to investigate the background of steganography, discuss steganographic tools in common use and methods commonly implemented. The theory is also enhanced with a series of documented steganography java classes which implement many of the algorithms discussed.
Customes reviews 1
Good overview and the software works (2010-07-10)
This book is quite short but represents a nice well written and accessable overview of steganography and some of the main image based steganography methods. Although its getting a little dated at this stage I would recommend it as a good undergraduate or first text on steganography. Most of the available books are more suited to postgraduate studies. By the way, I have tried the S/W associated with the book and it works although it takes a little effort to get the configuration right. Its also nicely documented which helps. The software implements a range of fairly classic steganography methods on gif images.