Book Image

Linux for Networking Professionals

By : Rob VandenBrink
1 (1)
Book Image

Linux for Networking Professionals

1 (1)
By: Rob VandenBrink

Overview of this book

As Linux continues to gain prominence, there has been a rise in network services being deployed on Linux for cost and flexibility reasons. If you are a networking professional or an infrastructure engineer involved with networks, extensive knowledge of Linux networking is a must. This book will guide you in building a strong foundation of Linux networking concepts. The book begins by covering various major distributions, how to pick the right distro, and basic Linux network configurations. You'll then move on to Linux network diagnostics, setting up a Linux firewall, and using Linux as a host for network services. You'll discover a wide range of network services, why they're important, and how to configure them in an enterprise environment. Finally, as you work with the example builds in this Linux book, you'll learn to configure various services to defend against common attacks. As you advance to the final chapters, you’ll be well on your way towards building the underpinnings for an all-Linux datacenter. By the end of this book, you'll be able to not only configure common Linux network services confidently, but also use tried-and-tested methodologies for future Linux installations.
Table of Contents (20 chapters)
1
Section 1: Linux Basics
4
Section 2: Linux as a Network Node and Troubleshooting Platform
8
Section 3: Linux Network Services

What is an IPS?

IPS started as Intrusion Detection Systems in the 1990s. The most commonly used IDS/IPS product from the beginning (way back in the 1990s) was Snort, which is still a product (both open source and commercial), and which many other modern IPS products are now based on.

An IPS watches network traffic for known attacks and then blocks them. Of course, there are a few failings in this process:

  • Enumerating badness is a solid losing proposition, which the anti-virus industry has long realized. No matter what signature pattern you enumerate for, an attacker can mount the same attack with only minor modifications to evade signature-based detections.
  • False positives are a milestone around the neck of these products. If they're not configured properly, it can be easy for a signature to mistakenly flag normal traffic as malicious and block it.
  • At the other end of the spectrum, if the configuration is too permissive, it can be easy to not alert or block...