Silence on the wire is the first book of M. Zalewski. However he is involved in computer security for a long time. I ve been reading his phrack articles for years, they are alway bright and very sharpe. He is famous for the vulnerabilities he discovers, his activity on security mailling list such as bugtrack and his study of TCP sequence prediction summarized in “strange attractor” (and maybe one day he might be famous as an aquarist :)). If you take the time to visit his homepage, you will see that he also have write a bunch of creative software. His most famous one is Passive Os Fingerprinter (POF) currently used in OpenBSD and various antispam and honeypot project.
I have read his book when it was release but never had the chance to review it so here we go:
I found the guide line of the book orignial and well done : You start from keyboard security to end up to Internet security following bits journey. This is well done and easy to follow. The style of writing is similar to his phrack article and therefor pleasant. The material are good however there is in some chapters a “deja-vu” sensation because it is merly the same content as the one found in phrack.
It is clearly a book by a security addict for security addicts. If you are knew to the field it is not the best way to start because it assume a lot of background. I particulary enjoy this mix between theroy and practice. This mix is quite unique in the security litterature I came accross and that is why I particulary recommand this book because, as author work it have this little thing that make it so special. My two favorite chapters are CHAPTER 1: I CAN HEAR YOU TYPING and CHAPTER 9: FOREIGN ACCENT.
If you are interesseted in security this is a book that you can’t aford to miss. It will give you as the author say ” Food for Thought”
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