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Preventing Web Attacks with Apache Review by Stephen Northcutt
If you run Apache, read this book
I should start with a disclaimer, I know Ryan Barnett and have followed his work through the years. That said, my responsibility as a reviewer is to help you as the reader decide whether to purchase this book, take the time to leaf through the book with the sample pages or Amazon, or to skip this book. I take that responsibility seriously.
If you have nothing to do with Web servers, you can safely skip this book. If you have operations, security or audit responsibilities for an organization that runs Apache and you do not read this book at least twice you are negligent. Please allow me to explain why I say that.
The book introduces the Center for Internet Security benchmark early on. This group, www.cisecurity.org, does two things very well, they determine to appropriate security configuration for a number of operating systems, devices, and programs and they produce tools to check the configuration. Wouldn't it make sense to know if your web server is configured properly, on average there are about 1,000 web defacements per day.
There are security books that about things and that is OK, but the best security books tell you how to do things. Ryan takes you through the download, installation and configuration of Apache. The "secret sauce" in the book starts in Chapter 5, where you are introduced to what is possible with the security modules for Apache. If you are an auditor, grab your highlighter, mark the tools and configurations and go pay the web admins a visit! Chapter 8 gives you a scenario to bring everything together. For the average reader, this is about as far as you are going to go.
Beyond Chapter 8, you are in advanced material, where Ryan is sharing the results of years of his research. This is for the security person looking for a bit of an edge to help protect their organization, or to do additional research. This is not a book for everyone, but it is a book for everyone running Apache!