Avatar (Fabio Alessandro Locati|Fale)'s blog

Practical Anonymity, by Peter Loshin (Elsevier/Syngress)

May 7, 2013

The anonymity on the web is probably one of the most debated topics on the web. Is possible to be completely anonymous? The short answer is no. This book tries to help the read to improve its anonymity, staying is the “real world”, as the “Practical” world in the title suggests. In this book you will not find anything that is too complex for an average user.

Whether this is good or bad, depends on you expectations. I’ve took this book the first time with really high expectations and I was really disappointed. When I took it for the second time, with different expectations, I did found the book pretty good.

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Hacking Web Apps by Mike Shema (Elsevier/Syngress)

April 16, 2013

Mike Shema speaks about a lot of different kind of attacks in his book in a real deep way, at the point that sometimes I wondered if he was planning to instruct people how to hack websites or only how to secure own websites. The book has often some code samples that allow a faster understanding of what the author is saying. Even if a coding knowledge is not required, the ability to understand HTML, JS, SQL, PHP, Python and C++ speeds up the reading.

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Logging and Log Management by Anton Chuvakin, Kevin Schmidt, Chris Phillips (Elsevier/Syngress)

April 9, 2013

Logs are one of the most powerful tools in the sysadmin hands, and probably of all kind of IT roles.

This book does deep into the logs and their management.

One of the aspects that I really liked about this book is the division of the text in chapters.

The book is “only” 420 pages long, but is well split in 22 chapter, so they are (on average) 21 pages long. This is a huge advantage, since it allows the reader to stop frequently without dividing a concept in two different reading sessions. Also, this policy, allows the reader to quickly find what is more important for her in that specific moment.

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Wireless Reconnaissance in Penetration Testing by Matthew Neely, Alex Hamerstone, Chris Sanyk (Elsevier/Syngress)

March 19, 2013

When someone says the word “wireless”, 99.9% of the audience thinks at the Wireless Networking Technologies (802.11 family). Very few think to the Bluetooth. Even fewer people think to all the other technologies that use wireless technology to work, such as cordless phone, guard radios, headsets, wireless camera etc. This book embrace the last point of view.

The first chapter provides basic information and motivation for Wireless Profiling.

The chapter 2 provides the reader with all the information she needs to be able to understand the wireless technology and it’s usage.

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