Mastering FreeBSD and OpenBSD Security 1st Edition

O'ReillyMastering FreeBSD and OpenBSD SecurityBy Yanek Korff, Paco Hope, Bruce PotterFirst Edition March 2005ISBN: 0-596-00626-8464 pages, $49.95 US[...]This book has been long awaited as the *BSD community has been lacking the number of security geared books compared to the Linux and Windows communities. I found that this book is almost the equal of "Linux Server Security", but for OpenBSD and FreeBSD. With OpenBSD being said to be one of the most secure operating systems, you would think there would be more books about the security other than the normal online documentation.I'm glad O'Reilly finally put out this book as it covers a broad area of security within OpenBSD and FreeBSD.This covers *BSD basics, initial install and hardening of the specific OS, security practices, running secure servers (DNS, Mail, Web), firewall, intrusion detection, system audits, incident response, and forensics. This is a broad coverage of security, but I wish on some of the specifics they would have went into detail discussing.Some points I wish were added in detail was coverage on OpenNTPD's security and/or atleast mentioning that it is contained within OpenBSD. Another would be more coverage of Qmail on FreeBSD/OpenBSD as there really wasn't much more than a mention of Qmail and basic information. Compared to the details given to Sendmail and Postfix, Qmail info was really slacking. The last point I would like to mention that I found lacking was possibly a more in-depth guide to CARP and what it's capable of doing. The main thing dealing with CARP that I would have liked to see would be about load balancing firewalls using CARP and PFSYNC.Other than these few minor lacking areas, I found this book to be great addition to other security books based around general Linux and BSD servers. I almost wish this book would have waited a little while longer before releasing or hope they plan an update soon as OpenBSD 3.7 is scheduled for release on May 19th and this book mainly just covers versions 3.5/3.6 for OpenBSD. Along with the new version of OpenBSD releasing, FreeBSD 5.4 was released not long after this book was published.Even lacking the parts that it does, I enjoyed reading the sections about DJBDNS comparison to BIND with details of the specifics. On top of this, there is enough information to get anyone with general *nix knowledge going with a OpenBSD/FreeBSD firewall or secure server. By no means is this book the answer to first time OpenBSD/FreeBSD system administrators to learn the basics from, but seems to be more geared for those atleast somewhat familiar with the *BSD feel of things and aware of what's going on inside their machine. In the beginning of the book it mentions this book was written "by system administrators for system administrators". For someone just getting started with OpenBSD I'd recommend this book, but also would recommend picking up Absolute OpenBSD ([...]) for more coverage of the basics. Otherwise, it will be difficult picking up on what they are saying in this book. Also, on the FreeBSD side of things I'd recommend Absolute BSD ([...]) or The Complete FreeBSD ([...] If your new to *BSD this book will help but a book to compliment it will help even more. Atleast once you learn the basics, you will get a detailed bit of information on securing your new *BSD box.I believe the writers met their goal of creating a book to solely cover the security features of OpenBSD and FreeBSD aswell as the types of servers run on those platforms. I'm glad this book arrived and look forward to seeing if they release a 2nd edition that is updated and possibly covers the parts that seem to be missing or lacking in detail. Congrats to O'Reilly and the writers.Lloyd RandallPensacola Linux User's Group

FreeBSD and OpenBSD are popular server operating systems. They have a reputation for long, reliable uptimes and are considered by many to be much more unified and mature than GNU/Linux distributions. Unlike GNU/Linux, the BSDs are developed in a unified, systematic fashion. The kernel, system binaries and application packages are released together. It's not just a kernel, with a variety of file systems and shells and applications from various sources rolled-up together into a distribution. The BSDs are an entire operating system. In this regard, they are more similar to Microsoft Windows or Apple's Mac OS X.Although both FreeBSD and OpenBSD maintain very good online documentation and manual pages, it's nice to have a book such as "Mastering FreeBSD and OpenBSD Security" as a reference.The book is broken into three sections. The first section emphasizes the cost of security and how cost should be directly related to the value of the system(s) or data being secured. Spending $60,000 to secure data valued at less than $100 is not a good idea. It's an inefficient use of scarce resources (time and money). The book encourages implementing an appropriate level of security, no more and no less. Secure installation and install tweaks are also covered in this section.The second section covers implementation of services in detail. DNS, mail, Web, etc. Firewalls are discussed in depth along with the particulars of PF and IPFW. Differences between FreeBSD jails and chrooted environments on OpenBSD systems are clearly explained. Traditional Unix servers such as Sendmail, BIND and Apache are covered in depth, however, alternative (and arguably more secure) servers are covered as well... using software such as djbdns, postfix, qmail and thttpd in place of the more traditional solutions are described.The third section goes over auditing, logging and incident response. From setting-up a secure log server to responding to break-ins. How to triage and decide how many resources should be spent on responses. Again, the book emphasizes an appropriate, cost-effective response. Resources are limited and both time and money should be used wisely.In conclusion, Mastering FreeBSD and OpenBSD Security is a worthwhile book. It covers BSD security topics (in detail) that are not often seen in books. It's a good read and a good reference written in a terse manner that gets the points across without being overly verbose... unlike many technical books on the market today.

I was really hoping to see a chapter on systrace or other advanced host-based security tools (HIPS and other kernel utils). All in all, the book is a nice addition to any security library. The basic ideas of risk management and confidentiality, integrity and availability (CIA), are covered throughout the book. I would say this is a good reference to use in addition to the man pages for both operating systems.

If you are looking at implementing one of the BSD distributions of Linux and want to secure your installation this book is an excellent choice. The authors cover the basic security that applies to all Linux distributions such as filesystem security and creating a sandbox, and then follows up with security options specific to BSD. The chapters cover installation, secure administration, creating a secure DNS server, secure mail servers (including Sendmail, Postfix, and qmail), secure web server, firewalls, intrusion detection, system auditing and incident response, and some forensics. However, the forensics information provides a decent overview without being detailed enough to be very useful.The authors do a really good job of explaining not only how to do various tasks but also the reasoning behind it and how it works to resolve specific problems. I like the fact that the authors don't do this in a piecemeal approach but provide a pathway to get to the system hardened before heading off into the specifics of harding particular services link DNS and Sendmail. They actually have a step by step procedure starting from a fresh install. This alone makes this one of the better books on hardening FreeBSD and OpenBSD. Mastering FreeBSD and OpenBSD Security is highly recommended.

un livre assez complet sur le sujet. je recommande celui-ci dans votre bibliothèque si vous êtes intéressés par la sécutité