macs

Security has long been a concern for Unix administrators who find themselves connected to the sometimes dark and dirty world of the Internet. With the advent of personal operating systems with file sharing, remote login and built-in web servers, and the spread of broadband networks with their always-on connectivity, it should now be a concern for everyone.

It really didn't concern me until one day when I was checking the logs on my Mac OS X box while developing a web app and discovered dozens of entries from all over the globe probing my box to see if it was an insecure IIS server. I then decided I needed to pay attention to security alerts and the help of a book like Macintosh OS X Maximum Security to help me understand and fix any holes.

The Good

The book is divided into four sections. Part 1 is about learning to think about security, covering such topics as physical security and protection from your users and bad guys. Part II, 'Vulnerabilities and Exposures,' covers the various sorts of attack such as password attacks, trojans and worms, sniffers and spoofing. Part III, 'Specific Mac OS X Resources and How To Secure Them,' covers just that, the various servers such as FTP, mail, Apache and SSH and how to go about making them safe. The final part covers attack prevention, detection, reaction and recovery with topics such as firewalls, alarm systems, logs and disaster planning.

Macintosh OS X Maximum Security is a large, extremely comprehensive volume. For the average person who wants to protect a small home network the information it provides is probably overkill. To make matters worse, the style is fairly verbose, particularly in the first section. Of course, if you want to secure a company network then you may need to know all the information -- and so all this background material is useful, if only so you can reach the right level of paranoia and suspicion.

The book is not a 'recipe' book that tells you "take these steps and you will have a secure machine"; rather it takes you through the possible holes and how to fix them. This approach seems much better for security, since it teaches you a respect for the places you have to open up and a methodical approach to doing so that will hopefully carry over beyond the specifics addressed. Any recipe is bound to have flaws since the operating system and the services are all changing, I'm hoping the methods and style this book have imparted to me will last beyond any changes.

The book also deals well with all the Macintosh-specific stuff, informing you well about such topics as Rendezvous, Apple Remote Desktop, using NetInfo and the like. One aspect that isn't well covered is Airport; securing an 802.11 network is barely touched on.

The Bad

The information provided in all areas of the book is quite detailed, and includes many links to further places to look for more (and more recent) information. Once again, for a book in an ever-changing field like security, this is a huge benefit. I would have appreciated some sort of a small website devoted to the book with the links mentioned gathered together and perhaps some notes on how things may have changed since the book's publication. Unfortunately the Sams Publishing site has a broken link to the book and while the authors say "we are creating a security section for the www.macosxunleashed.comwebsite," no such section exists as I was writing this review. Frankly I am disappointed at this, I think with a book on this sort of topic it behooves either the publisher or author to provide a place for errata, discussion and notes.

My only real complaint with the book itself is the huge size, and the long-winded nature of some of the material. I found the first two sections in particular almost tedious and definitely lecturing in tone. I would have rated this book higher if the editors at Sams had taken a large red pencil to slabs of the first section. Overall, I'd say that while not a 'must buy,' this book will have to do till I find something better, and I expect to loan my copy to several friends.

review originally for the Lower East Side Mac Unix Users Group,
http://lesmuug.org

OVERVIEW
--
If you like scary stories, lucid mindbending complexity, and epic tales of freaky proportion, this one's for you; (and it makes a terrific reference book to boot).
Enter a world where your arp tables are poisoned, zombie daemon processes run unnoticed by root-kitted servers, IP addresses are merely ghosts of the servers they say they are- you are not entering the twilight zone, you are entering the internet. Muahahahaahahaha. Ahem.

Experience Level: Basic UNIX/OSX understanding, an acrobatic and open mind required- (i.e. if you were able to follow the Matrix movies without skipping a beat, you'll be fine with this book).

ABOUT THIS BOOK
--
The general conceptual Tone of the book is great, as it doesn't ever assume that ANYTHING is bulletproof, like some foolhardy security texts and whitepapers can blindly promise.
A while back, I gave a very positive review for lesmuug.org, of 'Mac OS X Security' (Published by New Riders).

This book, 'Mac OS X, Maximum Security', (Published by SAMS) as a great extension/companion to that book.

'Mac OS X, Maximum Security', weighs in at over 2 inches thick, and as much as it provides a great overview to running secure and trusted systems, it goes into WAY more depth than the New Riders book; which can be good and bad- if your trying to get a general overview of secure systems, this book may be overwhelming.

Throughout reading this SAMS book, I found myself digging back into the New Riders book, to refresh my mind on general topics. Then my brain could better scale into the horrifying detail in this 'Maximum' book.
Some of the topics discussed are ridiculously frightening, insomuch as it clearly discusses why and how everything can be hacked, with counter-measures, and hacks to circumvent the counter-measures. It's really fun if you like that kind of thing.

All of this info, kept me in awe the entire time with just how powerful Mac OSX really is under the hood, and how seriously Apple has taken security.

BOOK SUMMARY
--
The book's table of contents is fairly intense. Chapters are dedicated to a single security concept, and various technologies are adressed in detail as sub-sections of each chapter. I'd say that the chosen topics covered are

While each section of every chapter makes for a nice scary bedtime story, they also proves tremendously useful in practical use.
For various softwares and systems discussed in 'Mac OS X, Maximun Security', enough information to get the focus of that section installed and/or running is excellently presented.
Each section has great references to current online information.

For each topic discussed, the authors try to take you right up to the edge of basic understanding and use- with some great tips thrown in for advanced users. This is great, as some topics have entire volumes dedicated to them.

There are absolutely TONS of general and special-use security tools and softwares discussed, and this text will sanely get you started with most of them.
This text gets you right up to the point where you have installed and are running a given software/system, and the only place to go for more information is online, in it's manual, or another book dedicated just to it. This is a key feature of 'Mac OS X, Maximun Security' to me, as it gets a person going can get going in the right direction using various tools, effectively lessening the learning curve with a new software.

CONCLUSION
--
So with that, if you run any services which are available from the public internet from your Mac, browse this book and stick it book on your shelf for when you need it.
If you just like to read scary stories, or you are really paranoid and want a good in-depth reference for Mac OSX Security, I believe 'Mac OS X, Maximun Security' will rock you.