Building Linux and Openbsd Firewalls

by Wes Sonnenreich and Tom Yates

A step-by-step guide to bulding a commercial-grade firewall with open source software Building Linux and OpenBSD Firewalls It's now more important than ever before to protect your data and computers from people trying to hack into your network. Without the proper security, the wrong person can gain access to your system and read critical documents, change data, delete items, and much worse. With this book, you'll quickly learn how to protect your...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0471353663
• ISBN13: 9780471353669
• Release Date: February 2000
• Publisher: Wiley
• Length: 384 Pages
• Weight: 1.54 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 7.4" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

Good intro book on firewalls and even networking in general.

This book is awesome. It assumes no prior networking experience and walks you through networking basics as well as basic security issues such as Denial of Service, spoofing, etc. Chapters with complete step-by-step installation instructions for both Linux and OpenBSD Unix are included, so it's very easy for any beginner to build a firewall for their home (or office) network. Tell people that you've personally built your own firewall using OpenBSD and you'll be guaranteed an approving nod from even the cockiest alpha geek!

A extremely good ( & funny!) book

This book is Gold for any security professional and network administrators (even with a poor background on the subject). It is written in a *very* practical/easy-to-stroll-thru fashion and with a nice & funny style.It also brings to the attention of the public an amazing OS (thx Theo!): OpenBSD and shows you how to install it from scratch & configure IPFilter, the firewall piece that comes with OpenBSD. The Linux part is also very interesting. There is also a companion Website that contains updates and tons of useful info/scripts ...If you are onto some serious security stuff, buy an OpenBSD CD and get the book. Otherwise stick with Linux and get the book anyways.

Very useful but not for beginners

I found this book very helpful and was able to set up a working OpenBSD firewall using it. I did have to consult the OpenBSD FAQs and other material on the Web, however. The only quibble I have with this book is its presumed target audience. The intro says "Knowledge of Unix is not assumed," but I would recommend that you not even consider starting a firewall building project unless you have good knowledge of UNIX, networking, and basic system administration. If you're picking up this book with that background, though, you will find it a very detailed and helpful guide to setting up your firewall.By the way, the book is geared towards OpenBSD 2.5 but the website has a lot of good updated information on the latest release, 2.7. Plus it has a bunch more examples beyond what is in the book.

Great for beginer to intermediate

This book starts off discussing why we need firewalls, along with a good recap on how TCP/IP works. (Even showing how Ping of Death, and TearDrop work!) The real meat doesn't start until Chapters 6 & 7, installing/configuring Linux, and Chapters 8 & 9 installing/configuring OpenBSD. Chapter 10 discusses tuning the firewall, showing BOTH Linux and OpenBSD setups, which is a nice touch.Pros: a) Theory _AND_ Implementation in the same book! b) NOT a dry read. Just the right mix of a little humor. c) Covers both Linux and BSD, nice if you want to switch or are interested in seeing how the "other" OS does things.Cons: a) A little superfluous at times, the information probably could be condensed a little. b) For Linux, David Ranch's online "Trinity OS" security guide is more resourceful. "Linux Firewalls" by Robert L. Ziegler continues where this book leaves off. I would love to see a "BSD Firewalls" which continues in the same tradition.Summary: "Building Firewalls for dummies" would sum up this book quite well. A GREAT intro for step-by-step firewall setup.

Great security intro for intermediate *ix usr's

I found the book very informative and easy to understand. They actually wrote it to teach rather than blow their own technical horn.