Linux Server Security, Second Edition

This is the Title of the Book, eMatter Edition

Copyright © 2007 O’Reilly & Associates, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Preface

Computer security can be both discouraging and liberating. Once you get past the

horror that comes with fully grasping its futility (a feeling identical to the one that

young French horn players get upon realizing no matter how hard they practice, their

instrument will continue to humiliate them periodically without warning), you real-

ize that there’s nowhere to go but up. But if you approach system security with:

• Enough curiosity to learn what the risks are

• Enough energy to identify and take the steps necessary to mitigate (and thus

intelligently assume) those risks

• Enough humility and vision to plan for the possible failure of even your most

elaborate security measures

you can greatly reduce your systems’ chances of being compromised. At least as

importantly, you can minimize the duration of and damage caused by any attacks

that do succeed. This book can help, on both counts.

What This Book Is About

Acknowledging that system security is, on some level, futile is my way of admitting

that this book isn’t really about “Linux server security,”

*

at least not in any absolute

sense. Clearly, the only way to make a computer absolutely secure is to disconnect it

from the network, power it down, repeatedly degauss its hard drive and memory,

and pulverize the whole thing into dust. ...