SOME GOOD SECURITY BOOKS

Amazon.com just posted my four star review of the fourth book in Jay Beale's Open Source Security Series, Nessus, Snort, and Ethereal Power Tools. From the review:

I've read and reviewed the three previous books in Jay Beale's Open Source Security Series -- Snort 2.1, Nessus Network Auditing, and Ethereal Packet Sniffing. I liked all three of those books, and I'm glad to say that this fourth book -- Nessus, Snort, and Ethereal Power Tools (NSAEPT), is a worthy continuation of Jay's series. NSAEPT is a unique resource for anyone who wants to extend Nessus, Snort, and Ethereal. The book could save programmers hours of work, and it should be the first step for those looking to contribute to the development of all three projects.

Update: Andrew Williams from Syngress provided this feedback concerning the problems with FI and FL characters being mangled. Those who register can download a PDF of the book.

My friends at Pearson sent me four new books from their various imprints. The first is Penetration Testing and Network Defense by Andrew Whitaker and Daniel Newman. This book has received high marks at Amazon.com and it seems more coherent than a similar book I just reviewed. This is my first Cisco Press security book. The last Cisco Press book I reviewed was Cisco Router Firewall Security.

Next is VPNs Illustrated: Tunnels, VPNs,, and IPsec by Jon C. Snader. This book is unique in that it looks and communicates like Richard Stevens' TCP/IP Illustrated, Volume 1: The Protocols. I wanted to read this book after seeing the diagrams, code snippets, and Tcpdump traces. I've also never found a really satisfying analysis of IPsec, which is covered by this book. The Amazon.com reviews are mixed, but I am hopeful