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| Silence on the Wire: A Field Guide to Passive Reconnaissance and Indirect Attacks | 
| Author: Michal Zalewski
Publisher: No Starch Press
Category: Book
List Price: $39.95
Buy New: $7.81
You Save: $32.14 (80%)
Buy New/Used from $7.60
Avg. Customer Rating:  (26 reviews)
Sales Rank: 251837
Format: Illustrated
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 312
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.3
Dimensions (in): 9.2 x 6.9 x 1
ISBN: 1593270461
Dewey Decimal Number: 005.8
UPC: 689145704617
EAN: 9781593270469
ASIN: 1593270461
Publication Date: April 15, 2005
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
 Interesting and detailed August 5, 2006
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
Zalewski offers a nice overview of passive information extraction techniques. Each section covers one approach to the problem of determining something about someone's computer use without being detected. He provides an overview of the technology involved and then talks about how to exploit it.
Sometimes his technology overviews are more suited to a neophyte, other times they correctly cover some arcane aspects of a standard. His writing style is familiar and easy going - no hard to read slogs in this book. Some of his analysis is dated and the techniques may not apply today, but they got me thinking of other things to look into.
I learned a few things from this book. Anytime I can remain entertained while that happens I consider it a win.
 Interesting July 8, 2006
2 out of 6 found this review helpful
This is one of those books that you go HMMMMMM!!! Very Interesting, but most of the things in the book are hard to understand. Also, he jumps around alot like if he's having a conversation rather than an inside manual to Attacks.
 Ages well July 4, 2006
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
This is one of the few information security books that seem to age well: I reread it after over a year, and it still appears to be quite refreshing and up to date. This only goes to show the difference between books written out of genuine passion, and the rest. Big kudos to the author.
Break from the norm June 24, 2006
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
I thought this was an excellent break from the standard fare of titles on hacking. It brought to light the efforts people can take to gain information about your systems. While I'm very skilled in technology, some of the books out there can be quite detailed and boring. Silence did a great job of breaking things down to a clear and readable level, and still presented some very detailed items. Anyone interested in systems security should read this book as a baseline primer if nothing else.
A mix of novel insights backed by standard background details March 20, 2006
22 out of 24 found this review helpful
I received Silence on the Wire (SOTW) almost one year ago. When I first tried reading the book, I couldn't get past Ch 1. In fact, I didn't try reading anything for three months, hoping I could re-engage SOTW. Eventually I put SOTW aside and read other books, only to return to SOTW this week. I'm glad I gave SOTW a second chance. There's plenty to like in this book if you look for the details that interest you.
Don't get me wrong; SOTW is one of the most innovative and original computing books available. You will find it even more interesting if you are not familiar with many of the works the author summarizes or describes. Those of you who have been active for the last 5-10 years will recognize research on poor Initial Sequence Numbers, various timing attacks, remotely counting hosts behind NAT, and so on. In some cases the author added novel insights to this old research, or presented related but obscure new variations. NAT detection via MSS clamping (Ch 11) is one example.
In some cases the author describes really cool techniques based on research I had not encountered. Parasitic storage and getting remote hosts to solve computational problems (Ch 16) are amazing ideas. Kudos to the author for including a bibliography, with references to many interesting papers.
SOTW suffers from one major flaw. SOTW sometimes wastes far too much time getting to "the point." For example, Ch 2 spends 20 pages explaining internal CPU workings and logic gates before finally talking about timing attacks. This bothered me on two fronts. One, many readers do not need a rehash of computing basics. Two, I was less inclined to slog through those 20 pages because I did not know why they were included.
This tendency to spend far too much time on background material appears in other SOTW chapters. Ch 5 spends 15 pages on modems and Ethernet before getting to "the point." (Ch 6 also repeats Ethernet basics.) Ch 9 includes way to many pages describing IP, UDP, TCP, and ICMP headers -- basic data found in any introductory networking book. Ch 14 describes the Web, HTTP, cookies, etc. The truth is that computing newbies are not going to appreciate many deeper insights in SOTW. If one accepts the premise that the audience must be intermediate-advanced to like the book, why waste their time on basic material?
I found only a few minor flaws. First, the author repeatedly starts sentences with "Too,". That should have been edited out. Second, p 80 states that "20 meters" is "just under 100 feet". It's more like 66 feet. On p 194 we read that sending a SYN packet to a closed port elicits a "RST". I see this frequently in networking books, which is frustrating; a SYN to a closed port elicits a RST ACK. (The authors uses the correct terminology later in the book, however.) On pp 130-131 the text and a table claims that TCP sequence numbers are "echoed back" in the SYN ACK and ACK segments. This isn't the case, as the numbers are incremented, not echoed. On p 129 the author repeats the claim that Kevin Mitnick used a TCP spoofing attacking against Tsutomo Shimomura, although that is most likely not true.
Overall, SOTW is a fascinating book. The intended audience will probably find it most rewarding to skim the text for valuable insights, and skip details on the basics of VLANs, STP, DTP, and the like. On a philosophical level, SOTW's frequent invocation of Turing and other luminaries reminded me that computer science is not the same as computer operations. Universities that churn out computer scientists are producing students not likely able to cope with the reality of intruders exploiting methods outlined in SOTW.
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