Preface. Mikhail Flenov: Linux through the eyes of a hacker What is Linux
Foreword
This book is dedicated to one of the most popular operating systems(OS) installed on servers - OS Linux. For home use, this system is not yet as popular as among professional administrators, but recently there have been prerequisites for capturing this market as well.
OS installation is getting easier, and GUI and ease of use in some cases is not inferior to the most famous operating system in the small business environment, Windows.
This book will be useful to Linux administrators and those users who want to get to know this system better. The configuration and security issues covered will be useful to specialists using various operating systems, because most of the information is not tied to a particular system.
You can find out how hackers get into servers and protect yourself from intrusion. Since some of the examples in this book can be used not only for defense, but also for offense, I would like to caution young burglars. Healthy curiosity is good, but remember that law enforcement never sleeps and always gets their way. If one time you were lucky with a hack and no one paid attention to it, then the next time you may be in the hands of justice.
Part of the book is written from the point of view of a hacker and demonstrates how they infiltrate the system. In the hope that this information will not be used to hack servers, I tried to focus on protection and left some things outside the scope of the presentation or simply did not finish so that there would be no temptation to use the methods of hackers and break the law. Of course, in order to implement my ideas (bring to their logical conclusion), you need to spend a few minutes programming or searching the Internet. But while the book may serve as a starting point for a hacker, I hope it doesn't. Remember the legality of your actions.
Any object can be viewed from different points of view. A simple example from life - a knife, being a table item, under certain circumstances becomes a murder weapon or a means of self-defense. In the same way, the hacker's methods that will be discussed in this book can be taken as tips for daily maintenance of the OS, ways to protect against intrusion, and means of hacking the system. I hope that you will not use the acquired knowledge for destructive purposes, it does not decorate a person. Why do you need "black" cracker popularity? Wouldn't it be better to devote yourself to more useful things.
Despite the obvious desire of Linux to settle in home computers, the setup in this OS is still too complicated and contains many options that most users do not need. If you just close your eyes and leave everything at default, then true Linux security is out of the question. No OS will work reliably and with maximum protection at these settings. The manufacturer cannot know in advance what we will need, and does everything possible to make the program work on any system, and for this you have to include many additional functions, which makes the system redundant.
It so happened that Linux administrators should have more experience and knowledge than Windows specialists, and this is due precisely to the complexity of the configuration. In this book, I tried to tell you as much as possible about the Linux OS, and at the same time I tried to do it from the position of a hacker.
Why is the book called "Linux through the eyes of a hacker", and what are those eyes? This question interests many of my readers. When we pick up a book, we hope that it appearance matches internal. In this case, we are talking about what content will correspond to this name? To answer this question, you need to clearly understand who a hacker is and what he sees in the OS.
When asked what I mean by the word "hacker", I quote the simplest example: as an administrator, you installed and made the OS work, but if you managed to configure it for maximum performance and security, then you are a hacker.
A hacker's skills should be aimed at creating something better than others (faster, more convenient and safer). This is exactly the Linux OS itself, created by hackers for the whole world.
This book covers the OS, from the very basics to complex system manipulation. All material presented is presented in a simple and accessible language. Thanks to this, you will not need additional literature to learn the Linux OS. All information will be available from one source. For a deeper study of the issue, you may need only a good knowledge of English language and reading the documentation or HOWTO files that come with the Linux system.
The main difference of the book is that we will not talk about security and performance in separate final chapters, which is a big mistake, but as necessary. When a person has already acquired the skills of inefficient work with the system, it will be difficult to relearn. That is why we will analyze sequentially (from the basics to complex issues) all aspects of each topic under consideration, carefully laying out the acquired knowledge “on the shelves”.
Description of the application and simple administration of Linux can always be found on the Internet or in the documentation for the OS, but information on efficient use harder to find, and all available information is fragmented and difficult to bring together. But security does not like fragmentary data. If you miss even one little thing, the computer is vulnerable to hacking.
As additional information on computer and network security, I advise you to read my book "Computer through the eyes of a hacker", which contains quite a lot general information on these issues.
Although this book is aimed more at describing the security of the Linux OS, many of the problems considered in it can be useful to you when building a secure Linux server. In the same way, the book "Linux through the eyes of a hacker" will be useful for Windows security specialists.
This book does not deal with virus issues because there is currently minimal virus activity in the Linux OS, but that does not mean that the danger does not exist. There is always a threat, and protection against viruses is similar to protection against Trojans, which are quite numerous for Linux. You can also read about virus attacks and the possibility of repelling them in the book Computer Through the Eyes of a Hacker.
So, let's get acquainted with Linux from the point of view of a hacker, and I am sure that you will look at it with completely different eyes and find a lot of new and interesting things for yourself.
Thanks
In each of my books, I try to thank everyone who participated in its creation and helped to bring it to light. Nothing would have been possible without these people.
First of all, I would like to mention the BHV-Petersburg publishing house, with which I have been working for several years. Thanks to the management, editors and proofreaders who work with me and help make the book the way I intended it to be. After all, you have to write in difficult terms, but it’s impossible otherwise, because. information will be outdated before the book hits the shelves.
I will never tire of thanking my parents, wife and children for their patience. After the main work, I come home and work on the next book. Thus, the family can only see me at the computer, and it is very difficult to communicate with me, because all thoughts rush far into virtual reality.
Many thanks to my friends and acquaintances who suggested something, helped with ideas and programs.
Special thanks to my ISP's administrators for allowing me to test some of the methods described in this book on their hardware and servers. I tried to work carefully and not destroy anything. It looks like it happened?
So it turns out, but animals are involved in the writing of each book. This work is no exception. My new cat Chikist walks around the apartment from 23:00 to 1:00 at night and screams, I can’t sleep, which means I devote more time to work.
I would like to thank another cat who is an assistant in the MS Office software package. I wrote the book in MS Word, and Linux OS worked in virtual machine so you can take screenshots. If a child was "thrown" at me, then the assistant cat helped to occupy my one-year-old son, acting as a nanny. I sat my son Kirill next to him, and he calmly played with the cat on the monitor screen, and I could continue working on the book. True, sometimes it was necessary to save the cat and the monitor, when the son began clumsily stroking his favorite animal with a small hand.
And the biggest gratitude is to you for buying the book, and to my regular readers, with whom I regularly communicate on the site's forum www.vr-online.ru. Last works based on their questions and suggestions. If you have any problems, then welcome to this forum. I will try to help as much as possible and look forward to any comments about this book. Your comments will help me do my job better.
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Mikhail Flenov
Linux through the eyes of a hacker
Foreword
This book is devoted to the consideration of one of the most popular operating systems (OS) installed on servers - Linux OS. For home use, this system is not yet as popular as among professional administrators, but recently there have been prerequisites for capturing this market as well.
Installing the OS is getting easier, and the graphical interface and user experience in some cases is not inferior to Windows, the most famous operating system in the small business environment.
This book will be useful to Linux administrators and those users who want to get to know this system better. The configuration and security issues covered will be useful to specialists using various operating systems, because most of the information is not tied to a particular system.
You can find out how hackers get into servers and protect yourself from intrusion. Since some of the examples in this book can be used not only for defense, but also for offense, I would like to caution young burglars. Healthy curiosity is good, but remember that law enforcement never sleeps and always gets their way. If one time you were lucky with a hack and no one paid attention to it, then the next time you may be in the hands of justice.
Part of the book is written from the point of view of a hacker and demonstrates how they infiltrate the system. In the hope that this information will not be used to hack servers, I tried to focus on protection and left some things outside the scope of the presentation or simply did not finish so that there would be no temptation to use the methods of hackers and break the law. Of course, in order to implement my ideas (bring to their logical conclusion), you need to spend a few minutes programming or searching the Internet. But while the book may serve as a starting point for a hacker, I hope it doesn't. Remember the legality of your actions.
Any object can be viewed from different points of view. A simple example from life - a knife, being a table item, under certain circumstances becomes a murder weapon or a means of self-defense. In the same way, the hacker's methods that will be discussed in this book can be taken as tips for daily maintenance of the OS, ways to protect against intrusion, and means of hacking the system. I hope that you will not use the acquired knowledge for destructive purposes, it does not decorate a person. Why do you need "black" cracker popularity? Wouldn't it be better to devote yourself to more useful things.
Despite the obvious desire of Linux to settle in home computers, the setup in this OS is still too complicated and contains many options that most users do not need. If you just close your eyes and leave everything at default, then true Linux security is out of the question. No OS will work reliably and with maximum protection at these settings. The manufacturer cannot know in advance what we will need, and does everything possible to make the program work on any system, and for this you have to include many additional functions, which makes the system redundant.
It just so happens that Linux administrators should have more experience and knowledge than Windows specialists, and this is due precisely to the complexity of configuration. In this book, I tried to tell you as much as possible about the Linux OS, and at the same time I tried to do it from the position of a hacker.
Why is the book called "Linux through the eyes of a hacker", and what are those eyes? This question interests many of my readers. When we pick up a book, we hope that its appearance matches the interior. In this case, we are talking about what content will correspond to this name? To answer this question, you need to clearly understand who a hacker is and what he sees in the OS.
When asked what I mean by "hacker", I give the simplest example: as an administrator, you installed and made the OS work, but if you managed to tune it to maximum performance and security, then you are a hacker.
A hacker's skills should be aimed at creating something better than others (faster, more convenient and safer). This is exactly the Linux OS itself, created by hackers for the whole world.
This book covers the OS, from the very basics to complex system manipulation. All material presented is presented in a simple and accessible language. Thanks to this, you will not need additional literature to learn the Linux OS. All information will be available from one source. For a deeper understanding of the subject, you may only need a good knowledge of the English language and reading the documentation or HOWTO files that come with the Linux system.
The issues of tuning the Linux OS for maximum performance and security are considered. Describes basic administration and access control, Firewall setup, file-sharing server, WEB-, FTP- and Proxy-servers, programs for delivery Email, DNS services, and system monitoring policy and data archiving. Potential vulnerabilities are given, recommendations are given to prevent possible attacks, and it is shown how to act in case of an attack or hacking of the system in order to restore its performance as quickly as possible and prevent data loss. In the third edition, the material has been revised and supplemented with new information in accordance with modern realities. For users, administrators and security professionals. (CD included with print edition only.)
On our website you can download the book "Linux through the eyes of a hacker" by Mikhail Flenov for free and without registration in fb2, rtf, epub, pdf, txt format, read the book online or buy a book in an online store.
Operating systems Linux Flenov M.E.: Linux through the eyes of a hackerFlenov M.E.: Linux through the eyes of a hacker
09.10.2006
The issues of tuning the Linux OS for maximum performance and security are considered. Potential vulnerabilities and recommendations for preventing possible attacks are described. given detailed description access rights settings and firewall configuration. It is shown how to act in case of an attack or hacking of the system in order to restore its performance as quickly as possible and prevent data loss.
In a simple and intelligible form, potential Linux vulnerabilities and recommendations for preventing attacks are described, a description of setting access rights and configuring a firewall is given. The issues of OS tuning for maximum performance and security are considered. Flenov took this book more seriously. The author thanks his cat, fits his thoughts on the topic "who are Hackers" on two pages, after which he gets down to business and diligently tells what threatens the Linux-based server network and how to deal with it (and very intelligibly), if possible, gives practical and real examples.
Mikhail Flenov
Linux through the eyes of a hacker
Foreword
This book is devoted to the consideration of one of the most popular operating systems (OS) installed on servers - Linux OS. For home use, this system is not yet as popular as among professional administrators, but recently there have been prerequisites for capturing this market as well.
Installing the OS is getting easier, and the graphical interface and user experience in some cases is not inferior to Windows, the most famous operating system in the small business environment.
This book will be useful to Linux administrators and those users who want to get to know this system better. The configuration and security issues covered will be useful to specialists using various operating systems, because most of the information is not tied to a particular system.
You can find out how hackers get into servers and protect yourself from intrusion. Since some of the examples in this book can be used not only for defense, but also for offense, I would like to caution young burglars. Healthy curiosity is good, but remember that law enforcement never sleeps and always gets their way. If one time you were lucky with a hack and no one paid attention to it, then the next time you may be in the hands of justice.
Part of the book is written from the point of view of a hacker and demonstrates how they infiltrate the system. In the hope that this information will not be used to hack servers, I tried to focus on protection and left some things outside the scope of the presentation or simply did not finish so that there would be no temptation to use the methods of hackers and break the law. Of course, in order to implement my ideas (bring to their logical conclusion), you need to spend a few minutes programming or searching the Internet. But while the book may serve as a starting point for a hacker, I hope it doesn't. Remember the legality of your actions.
Any object can be viewed from different points of view. A simple example from life - a knife, being a table item, under certain circumstances becomes a murder weapon or a means of self-defense. In the same way, the hacker's methods that will be discussed in this book can be taken as tips for daily maintenance of the OS, ways to protect against intrusion, and means of hacking the system. I hope that you will not use the acquired knowledge for destructive purposes, it does not decorate a person. Why do you need "black" cracker popularity? Wouldn't it be better to devote yourself to more useful things.
Despite the obvious desire of Linux to settle in home computers, the setup in this OS is still too complicated and contains many options that most users do not need. If you just close your eyes and leave everything at default, then true Linux security is out of the question. No OS will work reliably and with maximum protection at these settings. The manufacturer cannot know in advance what we will need, and does everything possible to make the program work on any system, and for this you have to include many additional functions, which makes the system redundant.
It just so happens that Linux administrators should have more experience and knowledge than Windows specialists, and this is due precisely to the complexity of configuration. In this book, I tried to tell you as much as possible about the Linux OS, and at the same time I tried to do it from the position of a hacker.
Why is the book called "Linux through the eyes of a hacker", and what are those eyes? This question interests many of my readers. When we pick up a book, we hope that its appearance matches the interior. In this case, we are talking about what content will correspond to this name? To answer this question, you need to clearly understand who a hacker is and what he sees in the OS.
When asked what I mean by "hacker", I give the simplest example: as an administrator, you installed and made the OS work, but if you managed to tune it to maximum performance and security, then you are a hacker.
A hacker's skills should be aimed at creating something better than others (faster, more convenient and safer). This is exactly the Linux OS itself, created by hackers for the whole world.
This book covers the OS, from the very basics to complex system manipulation. All material presented is presented in a simple and accessible language. Thanks to this, you will not need additional literature to learn the Linux OS. All information will be available from one source. For a deeper understanding of the subject, you may only need a good knowledge of the English language and reading the documentation or HOWTO files that come with the Linux system.
The main difference of the book is that we will not talk about security and performance in separate final chapters, which is a big mistake, but as necessary. When a person has already acquired the skills of inefficient work with the system, it will be difficult to relearn. That is why we will analyze sequentially (from the basics to complex issues) all aspects of each topic under consideration, carefully laying out the acquired knowledge “on the shelves”.
Description of the use and simple administration of Linux can always be found on the Internet or in the documentation for the OS, but information on effective use is more difficult to find, and all the information available is fragmented and difficult to bring together. But security does not like fragmentary data. If you miss even one little thing, the computer is vulnerable to hacking.
For additional information on computer and network security, I advise you to read my book "The Computer Through the Eyes of a Hacker", which provides a lot of general information on these issues.
While this book focuses more on Linux security, many of the issues covered in this book will be of use to you when building a secure Linux server. In the same way, the book "Linux through the eyes of a hacker" will be useful for Windows security specialists.
This book does not deal with virus issues because there is currently minimal virus activity in the Linux OS, but that does not mean that the danger does not exist. There is always a threat, and protection against viruses is similar to protection against Trojans, which are quite numerous for Linux. You can also read about virus attacks and the possibility of repelling them in the book Computer Through the Eyes of a Hacker.
So, let's get acquainted with Linux from the point of view of a hacker, and I am sure that you will look at it with completely different eyes and find a lot of new and interesting things for yourself.
Thanks
In each of my books, I try to thank everyone who participated in its creation and helped to bring it to light. Nothing would have been possible without these people.
First of all, I would like to mention the BHV-Petersburg publishing house, with which I have been working for several years. Thanks to the management, editors and proofreaders who work with me and help make the book the way I intended it to be. After all, you have to write in difficult terms, but it’s impossible otherwise, because. information will be outdated before the book hits the shelves.
I will never tire of thanking my parents, wife and children for their patience. After the main work, I come home and work on the next book. Thus, the family can only see me at the computer, and it is very difficult to communicate with me, because all thoughts rush far into virtual reality.
Many thanks to my friends and acquaintances who suggested something, helped with ideas and programs.
Special thanks to my ISP's administrators for allowing me to test some of the methods described in this book on their hardware and servers. I tried to work carefully and not destroy anything. It looks like that's what happened.
So it turns out, but animals are involved in the writing of each book. This work is no exception. My new cat Chikist walks around the apartment from 23:00 to 1:00 at night and screams, I can’t sleep, which means I devote more time to work.
I would like to thank another cat who is an assistant in the MS Office software package. I wrote the book in MS Word, and the Linux OS was running in a virtual machine so that I could take screenshots. If a child was "thrown" at me, then the assistant cat helped to occupy my one-year-old son, acting as a nanny. I sat my son Kirill next to him, and he calmly played with the cat on the monitor screen, and I could continue working on the book. True, sometimes it was necessary to save the cat and the monitor, when the son began clumsily stroking his favorite animal with a small hand.
And the biggest gratitude is to you for buying the book, and to my regular readers, with whom I regularly communicate on the site's forum www.vr-online.ru. The latest works are based on their questions and suggestions. If you have any problems, then welcome to this forum. I will try to help as much as possible and look forward to any comments about this book. Your comments will help me do my job better.
