
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. ...