Rating: 
Summary: Not up to par
Review: I've been reading "Linux Security Cookbook". I fully understand the goal of this book is to provide lots of little bits of wisdom, not a full fledged security book. I think that's pretty cool. However I'm finding that a lot of the recipies, if you will, are either not well explained, the equivalent of reading a real cookbook witohut knowing what it means ot 'fold the blueberries into the batter'. They could easily have spent more time explaining things so we didn't need to go read/re-reading the man pages just to understand the book.
Rating: 
Summary: Pensacola LUG review book
Review: The Linux Security Cookbook is a good hands-on guide to the major aspects of securing your Linux box. This book offers many quick reference guides to pieces of software for securing or testing your system and goes through many different means of fortifying your box including:
-controlling system access with firewalls
-monitoring your network
-using SSH and SSL
-intrusion detection systems
-authentication and cryptographic keys
-encrypting files and email messages
-system security probingThe recipes in this book allows administrators to learn quick and easy ways to secure their systems including over 150 ready-to-use scripts and configuration files without having to look up or research specific syntax. This book is definitely a quick hands-on guide to securing and monitoring your system and would recommend it to anyone looking for a good source of guides and ready-to-use scripts and configurations.
Rating:
Summary: Not what I was looking for
Review: The topics that are covered in this book are interesting, but they're not sufficient to secure your machine. If you want a book that will show you from start to finish what you should do, this is not the book. If you want to learn some weird hacks (in the positive, old-school definition of the word) this may be fun. But if you want to secure your machine, having read only this book will leave you open to many vulnerabilites. I strongly suggest that you get Hacking Exposed Linux 2nd Edition instead -- it is very complete.
Rating:
Summary: Not what I was looking for
Review: The topics that are covered in this book are interesting, but they're not sufficient to secure your machine. If you want a book that will show you from start to finish what you should do, this is not the book. If you want to learn some weird hacks (in the positive, old-school definition of the word) this may be fun. But if you want to secure your machine, having read only this book will leave you open to many vulnerabilites. I strongly suggest that you get Hacking Exposed Linux 2nd Edition instead -- it is very complete.
Rating:
Summary: Sporatic security coverage
Review: This book was more like a bunch of short articles. Nothing was sufficiently fleshed out, and it certainly wasn't cohesive enough to allow you to secure a machine. If you happened to want to do exactly one of the things they cover, then you're all right. Else, you have this feeling that you've secured your machine when in fact you have many gaping holes still left in your system. If you want to really learn how to secure your machine, I instead recommend Hacking Linux Exposed 2nd edition or Real World Linux Security.
Rating:
Summary: Sporatic security coverage
Review: This book was more like a bunch of short articles. Nothing was sufficiently fleshed out, and it certainly wasn't cohesive enough to allow you to secure a machine. If you happened to want to do exactly one of the things they cover, then you're all right. Else, you have this feeling that you've secured your machine when in fact you have many gaping holes still left in your system. If you want to really learn how to secure your machine, I instead recommend Hacking Linux Exposed 2nd edition or Real World Linux Security.
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