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It'd be a little bit of an overload for the beginners and not enough for the advanced.
One of the issues I find is that there really is no text out there that meets the needs of my courses without being too basic or too advanced. So this is why I'm contemplating an "intermediate" concept book. Certainly advanced topics could be covered. But the expectation of what I'd expect people to know beforehand would be slightly different.
Ok, my 2 cents.... without reading every suggestion here I would like to see something like:
Home PC Security for Dummies
Or turnips as I call them in my neck-o-the-woods. I know there is a great need for advanced security publications in todays world. But as a person who runs a small backwoods ISP, my customers are mostly computer illiterate and will not EVER pick up a tech manual. Hard enough for them to stay awake reading a greeting card. My day usually consists of: my computer is not connecting to the internet... or I can't get my email, my computer says it can't find my server.... But occasionally I get one that askes why their computer is running so slow, and that they can't browse for all of the pop-ups keep crashing their computer. I really try to help them but usually their computer is so full of adware and viruses that it is easier to reformat and start over, then in a month or two they are back again with the same problem.
To shorten my story a bit... they DO keep asking me if they can buy a book somewhere that will explain to them how to keep their system maintained and running in top condition.
Sorry about the near ranting, it has been a long turnip filled day.
:) At this point even intermediate is down the road for me. Maybe I just need to keep on reading and asking questions.. Maybe the first chapter or so could bring somebody up on where to go to get up to speed. Then again that might be a list as long as a book. Maybe in your newbie book you could include things like "What to look for when your kids surf, or chat on neopets or disney." Either way put me down fora copy and hopefully by then Ill be a little more up to speed.
One thing I like in a book is a little CD in the back for clarification. I don't know what resources you have avaliable, but you could possibly create several Marcomedia Flash "Simulations" for the average user? I say to have these flash simulations since real-code probably wouldn't go very well with the average user who decides that they want to run one of the "server.exe" files in the "examples" dir... Of course doing that would add tons of time, stress, and overhead to the book. Just an idea though.
Will this be an academic/reference book (seems to be what you're after) or is it a security for tummies book (tekies + dummies = tummies :D ) , or an ultimate reference?
It sounds academic, so you could possibly write it out like a story where a laid-back admin for the first time gets his network attacked and realizes that he isn't where he should be in security. Ie it starts up with disaster recovery. (Backups? What backups?) From there your character could open up to the world of computer security, and the student tags along. But of course if you want both views, you could write it as such and the student could see how the hacker did it, and why it succeeded...
Now that I think about it my rant would turn into an educational film/video... Anyways, good luck, and maybe you can pick something out of what I said that helps you. I think that it would be really interesting to see how this works out.
I'd like to see a book for once that doesn't presume to hold the fate of the world in the author's hands, stating, that "I'm not going to teach you how to do anything illegal." Well, criminals don't have those restrictions, the people that the book will be helping aren't going to be safe unless they understand what they're up against, and for an author to shield them from that because they might potentially inspire the mind of some evil twit with a modem and a bad attitude is irresponsible. I say, write a book listing exactly how the attacks are done in the first half, include programs and tools on a bundled cd, and encourage them to try them on their own computer networks. then in the second half of the book, list the countermeasures for every single attack included in the first half, with an addendum for general computer security measures, and also include service packs, security patches, and security software on the attached cd. Additionally, build a website to promote the book. offer a free premium membership for those who buy the book, and keep up-to-date security information on the site, for instance, a forum. Also, give it a title that catches the eye, none of that "* bible" or "* for dummies" or "uncle dave's wacky guide to *" crap. Call it something like "Hax0r Bax0r" or "chicken soup for the luser who's sick of getting 0wned" hehe. Also, check your source, and tell your editor you'll castrate him if he touches it. I had a TEXTBOOK in a programming class with code in it that didn't work. My teacher had to go through and find the mistakes and give us handouts explaining them for every chapter we did. By the end of the year, we were ridiculing the author on a daily basis. steer clear of mistakes in code at all costs. I hope I helped.
Hi All
Quote:
Tim_axe
One thing I like in a book is a little CD in the back for clarification. I don't know what resources you have avaliable, but you could possibly create several Marcomedia Flash "Simulations" for the average user? I say to have these flash simulations since real-code probably wouldn't go very well with the average user who decides that they want to run one of the "server.exe" files in the "examples" dir... Of course doing that would add tons of time, stress, and overhead to the book. Just an idea though.
The Above , Plus some "hands on" Demos & Examples on the CD as well . Server Config for Freeware WEB server Examples, would be Nice also.
Cheers :)
One thing I'd like to see covered is a whole chapter dedicated to iptables. This is something I haven't yet seen covered very well in a book (though there are a lot of very good tutorials on the net). A few chapters on hardening the system. A chapter on setting up a cheap router/firewall on an old system running linux would be nice (could be just a part of the chapter on iptables though). I'd also like to see buffer overflows covered in some sort of detail.
Cheers,
cgkanchi
Security for complete idiots
or perhaps
howz to setup da box
well on second thought
Security for n00bs would do ;)
How about 7h3 31337 gu1d3 70 s3cur1ty?
you know, i'm on a quest to find books that talks about database and data security. it is just so good in time that somebody knocks at everybody's door asking for enightenment on what topic to include in the book one is about to write.
i'm not talking about just passwords, but would it be nice to go a little deeper yet a most basic matter such as "Implementing Integrity Constraints", "Database and Data Recovery", those are still on the line of Security matters.
hey, i'm serious... :D
really serios... :jack: