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| Stealing The Network: How to Own the Box | 
| Authors: Ryan Russell, Fx, Dan Kaminsky
Publisher: SYNGRESS
Category: Book
Buy New: $19.98
Avg. Customer Rating:  (33 reviews)
Sales Rank: 694536
Format: Download: Pdf
Language: English (Published)
Media: Digital
Edition: 1
Pages: 329
ASIN: B00008DCE7
Publication Date: April 24, 2003
Release Date: April 6, 2006
Availability: Available for download now
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
This bestselling title is NOT intended to be a "install, configure, update, troubleshoot, and defend book." It is also NOT going to be another one of the countless Hacker books out there now by our competition. So, what IS it going to be? "Stealing the Network: How to Own the Box" is going to be an edgy, provocative, attack-oriented series of chapters written in a first hand, conversational style. World-renowned network security personalities will present a series of 25 to 30 page chapters written from the point of an attacker who is gaining access to a particular system. This book will portray the "street fighting" tactics used to attack networks and systems
Amazon.com Review
Stealing the Network is a book of science fiction. It's a series of short stories about characters who gain unauthorized access to equipment and information, or deny use of those resources to the people who are meant to have access to them. The characters, though sometimes well described, are not the stars of these stories. That honor belongs to the tools that the black-hat hackers use in their attacks, and also to the defensive measures arrayed against them by the hapless sysadmins who, in this volume, always lose. Consider this book, with its plentiful detail, the answer to every pretty but functionally half-baked user interface ever shown in a feature film. One can read this book for entertainment, though its writing falls well short of cyberpunk classics like Burning Chrome and Snow Crash. Its value is in its explicit references to current technologies--Cisco routers, OpenSSH, Windows 2000--and specific techniques for hacking them (the heroes and heroines of this book are always generous with command-history dumps). The specific detail may open your eyes to weaknesses in your own systems (or give you some ideas for, ahem, looking around on the network). Alternately, you can just enjoy the extra realism that the detail adds to these stories of packetized adventure. --David Wall
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| Customer Reviews: Read 28 more reviews...
 Fun for all September 7, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This is a entertaining peek into the mindset of hackers. It's definitely not a "how-to" manual to exploiting a system, but it gives you a great overview of the steps involved. Everyone from system administrators to curious home computer users should read this book. Not only will you learn a few things about how you should be securing your (or your employer's) valuables, but you will have a few good laughs as well.
 Good read June 15, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Nutshell review - A fun to read and enjoyable book. Some good scenarios and interesting analysis of various attacks and defences.
 Fiction that hits too close to home January 9, 2007
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
While they present this as a work of fiction, there is a large amount of information that can be immediately applied to your own situations. The authors mention that the stories come from real-life experiences or observations, and it is very easy to believe them. This is a great read for any network engineer or network administrator though don't read it at night, case some of the stories can be a little frightening, and you don't necessarily want the nightmares in your sleep.
Entertaining in it's own right... August 16, 2006
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
The Stealing the Network series of books is in a catagory on it's own. Thrilling, entertaining, and fun to read just scratches the surface of these books. I'll recommend this book to anybody, from joe sixpack who only uses the internet for games and pr0n to mitnick himself.
The highly detailed accounts immerse the reader in a truly fantastic series of stories of hackers and their techniques. Remember, the game is a mental one...
Useful, readable illustration of computer security concepts October 31, 2005
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
_Stealing the Network: How to Own the Box_ has 10 stories with a first person narrator, who is either an attacker, or in two cases, a defender. While the characterization isn't up to the standards of (good) commercial fiction* in most cases, it makes the technical medicine go down easier and gives a picture of who and why people do this stuff. That picture is useful in making an abstraction feel more like a concrete threat.
I think this would be a good intro for a non-technical manager of security staff who needs to know why we have to worry about these things. It's a faster read than Bruce Schneir's admirable _Secrets and Lies_, which is a straight discussion of how to think about security, and probably more rigorous and complete. This offers specific examples and leads to many similar lessons. I will read the next one, How to Own a Continent, when its turn comes up in the queue.
One quibble: for a book published in 2003, with a chapter that mentions Snort a couple of times, I was disappointed in the Laws of Security Appendix. Specifically, the Law that "Any IDS can be Evaded" contains some material that is way out of date. To state that "free ones are starting to come available" at least a decade after Shadow, and at least a couple of years after Snort surpassed proprietary intrusion detection solutions, is a bit, well, weird. Snort is big time - Checkpoint just bought the company that writes it. The two chapters telling a defender's tale refer to Snort.
Also, I'm not convinced of the law's validity. The escalation between intrusion evaders and detectors is an interesting one but I think IDS has the advantage in this go-round. We can detect it, if we're watching the right things. Many of the evasion techniques are themselves alertable!
Apart from that, I found myself nodding in agreement with most of what was said. This taught me some things, and I've read pretty widely. This title is available cheap if you look at used. Check it out.
*It's at least better than Tom Clancy, whose plots are the only thing separating him from pure cheese, the male equivalent of a romance novel.
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