Andrew Pilley - Mycronite Networks

A while ago, I received a copy of the book 'Security Warrior' (Cyrus Peikari and Anton Chuvakin, 2004) from an associate from O'Reilly, through a SAGE-AU meeting.

A condition of receiving it was that I should do a quick review, so here we go, read on for my thoughts about the title.

First thing that you really notice from this book is that it tosses you very far into the deep end. Right from the first chapter, the book starts discussing x86 and arm assembly, talking about the basics, such as registers, instructions, stacks, etc. This can easily be a little disconcerting for people who haven't had some basic assembly programming subjects, even for someone who's studied C or C++ programming. Can be a problem since many courses are starting to drop assembly from their structure.

It also discusses the relationship between a language like C, and assembly, etc, to get you into the mindset of thinking about how a program's source code relates to the system it runs on.

Security Warrior does a reasonable job of giving you references to continue your study. Each chapter has a references section at the end, with links to other reading material, most of it freely available. Be warned however, often the reading material is very technical, eg. with references to the intel programming guides for the x86 architecture, however, it's tempered with references to introductory material as well, for the first few chapters.

Fortunately for me, since I'm generally from a UNIX-alike background, and I'm only just starting to extend into the Windows area, this book covers both platforms well, as well as discussing some WinCE-related material. This includes discussions on the tools available, different techniques that the platforms require, etc. Some of the information is a little out of date now, since the book is a few years old, but most of the tools are still very usable today, and the lessons that go with them are generally pretty easily adapted to newer tools.

Once the initial tools and techniques have been discussed, and a few case studies have been examined, the rest of the book is broken down into three technically-oriented areas. Network-based attacks, Platform-oriented attacks, and finally, Active and Passive Defensive measures (After all, a good warrior knows both when to attack and when to retreat :) )

Network attacks discuss the usual suspects, information gathering, network penetration techniques, social engineering, and how to get away with the attack once it's successful.

Platform attacks discuss the differences between various platforms, UNIX systems, Windows systems, WinCE systems, wireless, etc, and looks at some case studies in each.

The defense section discusses techniques for log management, intrusion detection, analysis (honeypots for experimentation), case studies, response plans, and finally, also methods for making forensics less effective.

Once again, references to tools, discussion sites, underground information stores, etc have been made in each chapter.

While the above seems fairly comprehensive on the face of it, one area I found that could possibly have been discussed in better detail would be the creation of your own tools. The focus the book has on utilizing existing tools is perhaps a little too strong, and as a result, some of the information is rapidly being outdated as newer tools are produced. Fortunately, the resources referenced are likely to be updated to include such tools anyway.