Thursday, May 29, 2008

43

Fedora Linux (2006)

Overview

"Neither a "Starting Linux" book nor a dry reference manual, this book has a lot to offer to those coming to Fedora from other operating systems or distros." -- Behdad Esfahbod, Fedora developer

This book will get you up to speed quickly on Fedora Linux, a securely-designed Linux distribution that includes a massive selection of free software packages. Fedora is hardened out-of-the-box, it's easy to install, and extensively customizable - and this book shows you how to make Fedora work for you.

Fedora Linux: A Complete Guide to Red Hat's Community Distribution will take you deep into essential Fedora tasks and activities by presenting them in easy-to-learn modules. From installation and configuration through advanced topics such as administration, security, and virtualization, this book captures the important details of how Fedora Core works--without the fluff that bogs down other books and help/how-to web sites. Instead, you can learn from a concise task-based approach to using Fedora as both a desktop and server operating system.

In this book, you'll learn how to:

Install Fedora and perform basic administrative tasks

Configure the KDE and GNOME desktops

Get power management working on your notebook computer and hop on a wired or wireless network

Find, install, and update any of the thousands of packages available for Fedora

Perform backups, increase reliability with RAID, and manage your disks with logical volumes

Set up a server with file sharing, DNS, DHCP, email, a Web server, and more

Work with Fedora's security features including SELinux, PAM, and Access Control Lists (ACLs)

Whether you are running the stable version of Fedora Core or bleeding-edge Rawhide releases, this book has something for every level of user. The modular, lab-based approach not only shows you how things work-but also explains why--and provides you with the answers you need to get up and running with Fedora Linux.

Chris Tyler is a computer consultant and a professor of computer studies at Seneca College in Toronto, Canada where he teaches courses on Linux and X Window System Administration. He has worked on systems ranging from embedded data converters to Multics mainframes.
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2

Extreme Exploits - Advanced Defenses Against Hardcore Hacks (2005)

Foreword

If you are reading this foreword on a business weekday it's likely that before the day closes at least ten software vulnerabilities will be announced. In addition to these software vulnerabilities, the day will also see on the order of twenty viruses or virus variants released. To cap all this off, we will see a minimum of four million infected computers on the Internet diligently trying to attack other computers. These numbers are alarming and even more so if you consider that these are conservative averages based on empirical data in hand. What's out there that we don't know about?

The rising trend in terms of pure volume of network-based threats with which businesses and consumers are faced is not likely to abate any time in the near term and in fact is likely only to worsen. This leaves many of us struggling to reduce risk in the face of ever-growing threats both in terms of volume and sophistication.

To complicate matters further it seems that every device we use on a daily basis is becoming network connected using IP. It's not just about security of our servers, routers, and desktops any longer, but is expanding to our phones, PDAs, video game consoles, etc. Thankfully, security software plays a role in helping us defend our expanding networks, but it is not the panacea for which many of us would hope. The keystone to our ability to get in front of these issues is security knowledge in the hands of those practitioners tasked with protecting us from this ever-rising tide.

I sincerely hope that this book will allow you to do just that. The authors have a unique mix of industry experience not common in texts like this. Not only have the authors been responsible for securing large swaths of the Internet backbone, but they have also been at the forefront of security software product development, helping protect Fortune 500 companies and world governments for more than a decade. Much of this experience has been distilled and articulated into this book for the benefit of the reader. With it, I believe you will be better equipped to deal with the threat-rich environment we are all faced with.

Alfred Huger
Senior Director of Engineering
Symantec Security Response
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1

Essential CVS, 2nd Edition (2006)

This easy-to-follow reference shows a variety of professionals how to use the Concurrent Versions System (CVS), the open source tool that lets you manage versions of anything stored in files. Ideal for software developers tracking different versions of the same code, this new edition has been expanded to explain common usages of CVS for system administrators, project managers, software architects, user-interface (UI) specialists, graphic designers and others.

Current for version 1.12, Essential CVS, 2nd Edition offers an overview of CVS, explains the core concepts, and describes the commands that most people use on a day-to-day basis. For those who need to get up to speed rapidly, the book's Quickstart Guide shows you how to build and use a basic CVS repository with the default settings and a minimum of extras. You'll also find:

A full command reference that details all aspects of customizing CVS for automation, logging, branching, merging documents, and creating alerts

Examples and descriptions of the most commonly used options for each command

Why and when to tag or branch your project, tagging before releases, and using branching to create a bugfix version of a project

Details on the systems used in CVS to permit multiple developers to work on the same project without loss of data
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1

Firefox Hacks - Tips & Tools For Next-Generation Web Browsing (2005)

How This Book Is Organized

Firefox Hacks is divided into nine chapters, organized by subject:

Chapter 1, Firefox Basics

This chapter covers beginner end-user features, without attempting to reproduce the Firefox Help system. It's a brief tour of the browser from a number of different user perspectives.


Chapter 2, Security

This chapter covers the security arrangements that affect how Firefox interacts with the Web. It describes how to raise and lower security in a number of different ways.


Chapter 3, Installation

This chapter explains how to install Firefox your way, rather than the standard way. It provides installation tactics suitable for a number of lifestyles and organizational settings.


Chapter 4, Web Surfing Enhancements

This chapter explains how to make Firefox work harder for you as an information-gathering tool.


Chapter 5, Power Tools for Web Developers

This chapter examines Firefox as a testing and development tool for web page design. Web developers love Firefox.


Chapter 6, Power XML for Web Pages

This chapter is for more advanced web application projects, where programming or medium-weight XML technology is needed. It describes how to connect content to XML standards and code.


Chapter 7, Hack the Chrome Ugly

This chapter looks under the hood of the Firefox installation and finds that with only a drop of programming energy, you can make major changes to the browser.


Chapter 8, Hack the Chrome Cleanly

This chapter explains how to properly prepare fancy Firefox enhancements, such as extensions and themes.


Chapter 9, Work More Closely with Firefox

Firefox is a complex tool and a building block of the Web. If you hope to modify that building block to suit yourself, then you'll need help getting started. This chapter describes how to connect to the core technology and the people already involved in its development.
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1

Effective Enterprise Java (2004)

Foreword


Designing and implementing large-scale enterprise systems is hard. Building effective enterprise Java deployments is even harder. I see these difficulties on a daily basis. When consulting on enterprise projects, I see the real-world issues that developers are facing. I have also seen discussions, frustrations, and solutions to some of the issues on a daily basis on TheServerSide.com (Your Enterprise Java Community). TheServerSide.com really grew from the needs of developers faced with the new world of J2EE. It was the water cooler that allowed us to chat about solutions that worked for us, and it saw the growth of enterprise Java patterns.

Developing for the enterprise is a very different beast when compared to building smaller, standalone applications. We have to consider issues that we can safely ignore in the other world. As soon as we have to share data among multiple users, we start down the enterprise path. Then we start facing questions: What is the best solution for allowing concurrency to this data? How coherent and correct does it have to be? How can we scale up from 2 to 50 to 1,000 clients? These are all significant questions, and I don't feel that the average developer has enough help in answering them. Well, simply answering the questions may not be the correct focus. We need to be taught about the various issues involved and shown techniques that can help with the various problems. With Ted Neward's book, we are now armed with the knowledge that will allow us to come up with the right balance in the solution for each particular problem.

No book has attacked these problems quite like Effective Enterprise Java does. The most important part of this book is that it teaches you two things really well.

You will understand the general issues of enterprise computing.

These enterprise problems are far from new. Ted has been around the block, and he understands the core issues at work. A non-Java developer would get a lot out of this book for this very reason. What you learn here will be with you for as long as you develop enterprise solutions. The language and APIs may change, but you will understand the issues in building a good architecture, the options you have for communication, the choices for where to store state, the various security concerns, and so much more.

You will be able to attack the problems by using enterprise Java.

Although the book offers genuine insight into the general enterprise problems, it also gives you tools to solve them with enterprise Java today. You will understand more about where the various enterprise Java technologies fit together. When would you use Web Services? What can messaging do for you? What is EJB good for? This book provides answers to these questions.

It is great to have some answers to these common questions. The style of the book, in which you are given a set of "effective items," gets right to the point. Get stuck in, and enjoy the ride!

Dion Almaer
Editor-in-Chief,
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1

Effective C++, 3rd Edition (2005)

Introduction


Learning the fundamentals of a programming language is one thing; learning how to design and implement effective programs in that language is something else entirely. This is especially true of C++, a language boasting an uncommon range of power and expressiveness. Properly used, C++ can be a joy to work with. An enormous variety of designs can be directly expressed and efficiently implemented. A judiciously chosen and carefully crafted set of classes, functions, and templates can make application programming easy, intuitive, efficient, and nearly error-free. It isn't unduly difficult to write effective C++ programs, if you know how to do it. Used without discipline, however, C++ can lead to code that is incomprehensible, unmaintainable, inextensible, inefficient, and just plain wrong.

The purpose of this book is to show you how to use C++ effectively. I assume you already know C++ as a language and that you have some experience in its use. What I provide here is a guide to using the language so that your software is comprehensible, maintainable, portable, extensible, efficient, and likely to behave as you expect.

The advice I proffer falls into two broad categories: general design strategies, and the nuts and bolts of specific language features. The design discussions concentrate on how to choose between different approaches to accomplishing something in C++. How do you choose between inheritance and templates? Between public and private inheritance? Between private inheritance and composition? Between member and non-member functions? Between pass-by-value and pass-by-reference? It's important to make these decisions correctly at the outset, because a poor choice may not become apparent until much later in the development process, at which point rectifying it is often difficult, time-consuming, and expensive.

Even when you know exactly what you want to do, getting things just right can be tricky. What's the proper return type for assignment operators? When should a destructor be virtual? How should operator new behave when it can't find enough memory? It's crucial to sweat details like these, because failure to do so almost always leads to unexpected, possibly mystifying program behavior. This book will help you avoid that.

This is not a comprehensive reference for C++. Rather, it's a collection of 55 specific suggestions (I call them Items) for how you can improve your programs and designs. Each Item stands more or less on its own, but most also contain references to other Items. One way to read the book, then, is to start with an Item of interest, then follow its references to see where they lead you.

The book isn't an introduction to C++, either. In Chapter 2, for example, I'm eager to tell you all about the proper implementations of constructors, destructors, and assignment operators, but I assume you already know or can go elsewhere to find out what these functions do and how they are declared. A number of C++ books contain information such as that.

The purpose of this book is to highlight those aspects of C++ programming that are often overlooked. Other books describe the different parts of the language. This book tells you how to combine those parts so you end up with effective programs. Other books tell you how to get your programs to compile. This book tells you how to avoid problems that compilers won't tell you about.

At the same time, this book limits itself to standard C++. Only features in the official language standard have been used here. Portability is a key concern in this book, so if you're looking for platform-dependent hacks and kludges, this is not the place to find them.

Another thing you won't find in this book is the C++ Gospel, the One True Path to perfect C++ software. Each of the Items in this book provides guidance on how to develop better designs, how to avoid common problems, or how to achieve greater efficiency, but none of the Items is universally applicable. Software design and implementation is a complex task, one colored by the constraints of the hardware, the operating system, and the application, so the best I can do is provide guidelines for creating better programs.

If you follow all the guidelines all the time, you are unlikely to fall into the most common traps surrounding C++, but guidelines, by their nature, have exceptions. That's why each Item has an explanation. The explanations are the most important part of the book. Only by understanding the rationale behind an Item can you determine whether it applies to the software you are developing and to the unique constraints under which you toil.

The best use of this book is to gain insight into how C++ behaves, why it behaves that way, and how to use its behavior to your advantage. Blind application of the Items in this book is clearly inappropriate, but at the same time, you probably shouldn't violate any of the guidelines without a good reason.
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2

Home Network Security Simplified (2006)

Overview


A straightforward, graphic-based reference for securing your home network

Set up a firewall

Secure your wireless network

Stop adware and spyware

Keep your children safe from online threats

Prevent a virus outbreak

Avoid Internet scams

Phishing. Malware. Spyware. Trojan horses. Firewalls. Parental controls. If you have a home computer connected to the Internet, you need to understand these security terms. If that connection is high-speed (always on) or you run a wireless network, your needyour vulnerabilityis that much greater. Now, with Home Network Security Simplified, you can get illustrated, easy-to-digest information written specifically for your needs.

For each class of security threat, Home Network Security Simplified provides a tutorialincluding tricks and tools that hackers use, a primer on network security design fundamentals, and step-by-step instructions on implementing security solutions. The authors also offer tips for monitoring your network and show what to do in the event of a security breach. Specifically, you will learn how to:

Home Network Security Simplified features engaging four-color illustrations throughout, as well as informative security tips and pointers to other resources for more advanced information. Use this book to find the peace of mind that comes with knowing that your home network and your information are secure.

Jim Doherty is the director of marketing and programs with Symbol Technologies' industry solutions group. Prior to joining Symbol, Jim worked at Cisco Systems, where he led various marketing campaigns for IP telephony and routing and switching solutions. Jim has 17 years of engineering and marketing experience across a broad range of networking and communications technologies. Jim is a coauthor of the Networking Simplified series, including Cisco Networking Simplified, Home Networking Simplified, and Internet Phone Services Simplified. He is also the author of the "Study Notes" section of CCNA Flash Cards and Exam Practice Pack (CCNA Self-Study, Exam #640-801), Second Edition. Jim is a former Marine Corps sergeant; he holds a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from N.C. State University and a master's degree in business administration from Duke University.

Neil Anderson is the senior manager of enterprise systems engineering at Cisco Systems. Neil has more than 20 years of engineering experience including public telephone systems, mobile phone systems, Internet, and home networking. At Cisco, Neil's focus is large corporate customers in the areas of routing and switching, wireless, security, and IP communications. Neil is a coauthor of the Networking Simplified series, including Home Networking Simplified and Internet Phone Services Simplified. Neil holds a bachelor's degree in computer science.

This book is part of the Networking Technology Series from Cisco Press®, the only authorized publisher for Cisco Systems.
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2

Home Networking - The Missing Manual (2005)

About This Book


This book is broken down into two main parts: Part One covers planning, buying, and setting up your network. The four chapters in this part help you decide what kind of network makes sense for your home; how to pick out the right gear; and how to get everything plugged in and running. By the end of Part One, all the computers in your home can tap into and share a nice, juicy Internet connection.

Part Two covers the things you can actually do on your network once it's working, including exchanging files between computers, connecting your PCs to your stereo, and tapping into your network when you're on the road. Here's a quick rundown of what you'll find in each chapter.


Part One
Chapter 1 introduces you to the major types of home networks in use today: wired, wireless, and wired through your electrical system. You'll learn the pros and cons of each network type so you can pick the one that's right for you and your home.

After reading Chapter 1, if you decide you're ready for a traditional wired Ethernet network (the kind with those thick plastic cables that you probably have in your office), you can go right to Chapter 2, which tells you everything you need to know about setting up an Ethernet network.

Want to minimize the cables in your life and have the freedom to roam the house surfing the Web as you follow your toddler around? You may have heard of WiFi (short for "Wireless Fidelity"), the networking technology that beams your data around the house over radio waves instead of through plastic-coated cables. There are several types of WiFi to choose from, and Chapter 3 explains what they are so you can decide which version makes sense for you. The chapter also includes a section on wireless-network security so you can learn how to protect your network airspace from those who may try to horn in.

Like the notion of wireless but have trouble connecting the network down to the basement office? As explained in Chapter 4, Powerline devices can convert your home's electrical system into a data network. Powerline is an up-and-coming technology that you may not have heard much about. You'll learn how Powerline works and what you'll need to get plugged in.

Part Two

Once you've installed your home network, Part Two helps you put the network to work. In Chapter 5, you'll learn how to share files, folders, and printers among computers running all modern versions of the Windows operating system.

If you have a house full of Macintosh machines, Chapter 6 is for you. It shows you how to configure your Mac OS X computers, as well as those running the older version of Apple's operating system: good ol' Mac OS 9.

It's a cross-platform world out there, though, and if you happen to have a mix of Windows PCs and Macs in your house, Chapter 7 shows you how to get the two systems talking to each other.

Chapter 8 is where the real fun beginsif you consider streaming music around the house, playing network video games, and putting your digital photos on the big screen fun. And because we all have to leave the house sometimes, Chapter 9 tells you how to connect to your home network when you're on the road.
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1

Honeypots - Tracking Hackers (2002)

Foreword: Giving the Hackers a Kick Where It Hurts


I'm an unabashed Lance Spitzner fan. This is the guy whose cell phone voice message says, "I'm busy geeking out right now, but leave a message, and I'll get back to you as soon as I can." I don't know when he actually stops geeking out long enough to sleep. I sometimes wonder if there are actually two of him. His enthusiasm for what he's doing bleeds over into all aspects of his life. Ideas for cool stuff erupt from him like a volcano and swirl around him, sucking in casual bystanders and students alike. It's somewhat intimidating to share a stage with him at a conference. He makes just about everyone else look uninteresting and tepid by comparison. Lance is a man who loves what he's doing, and what he loves doing is tracking hackers, sharing that information, and making a difference.

A lot of people like to reserve the term "hacker" for the techno-elite computer hobbyist—those media darlings often described as "misunderstood whiz-kids" or similar nonsense. One of the great by-products of Lance's work with honeypots and honeynets is that he's helped give us a much clearer picture of the hacker in action: often technically unsophisticated kids playing around with technologies they barely understand. In Know Your Enemy the Honeynet Project demonstrated just how active and unskilled most hackers are. What's that—you don't believe it? Set up your own honeypot or honeynet and see for yourself. This book gives you the necessary tools and concepts to do it!

I think it's a great thing for the security community that Lance has written this book. In the past, the hackers roamed our networks with supreme confidence in their anonymity. They take advantage of systems they've compromised to chat with their buddies safely or to launch attacks against other systems and sites without fear of detection. Now, however, they may pause to wonder if their bases of operation are safe—whether they're actually planning their attacks and deploying their tricks under a microscope.

Honeypots are going to become a critical weapon in the good guys' arsenals. They don't catch only the lame hackers. Sometimes they catch the new tools and are able to reduce their effectiveness in the wild by letting security practitioners quickly react before they become widespread. They don't catch just the script kiddies outside your firewall but the hackers who work for your own company. They don't catch just unimportant stuff; sometimes they catch industrial spies. They can be time- and effort-consuming to set up and operate, but they're fun, instructive, and a terrific way for a good guy to gain an education on computer forensics in a real-world, low-risk environment.

Right now there are about a half-dozen commercial honeypot products on the market. Lance covers several of them in this book, as well as "homemade" honeypots and honeynets, focusing on how they operate, their value, how to implement them, and their respective advantages. I predict that within one year, there will be dozens of commercial honeypots. Within two years, there will be a hundred. This is all good news for the good guys because it'll make it easier for us to deploy honeypots and harder for the bad guys to recognize and avoid them all. When you're trying to defend against an unknown new form of attack, the best defense is an unknown new form of defense. Honeypots will keep the hackers on their toes and, I predict, will do a lot to shatter their sense of invulnerability. This book is a great place to start learning about the currently available solutions.

In this book Lance also tackles the confusion surrounding the legality of honeypots. Lots of practitioners I've talked to are scared to dabble in honeypots because they're afraid it may be considered entrapment or somehow illegal. It's probably a good idea to read the chapter on legal issues twice. It may suprise you. Welcome to the cutting edge of technology, where innovation happens and the law is slow to catch up to new concepts. Meanwhile, you can bet that with renewed concerns about state-sponsored industrial espionage and terrorism the "big boys" will be setting up honeypots of their own. I'd hate to be a script kiddy who chose to launch his next attack from a CIA honeypot system! When the big boys come into the honeypot arena, you can bet that they'll make sure it's legal.

The sheer variety and options for mischief with honeypots are staggering. (There is even a honeypot for spam e-mails.) You can use the concepts in this book to deploy just about any kind of honeypot you can imagine. Would you like to build a honeypot for collecting software pirates? I don't think that's been done yet. How about a honeypot that measures which hacking tools are most popular by tracking hits against an index page? I don't think that's been done yet, either. The possibilities are endless, and I found it difficult to read this book without thinking, "What if . . . ?" over and over again.

I hope you enjoy this book and I hope it inspires you to exercise your own creativity and learn what the bad guys are up to and then share it with the security community. Then follow Lance's lead, and make a difference.

—Marcus J. Ranum
Woodbine, MD
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1

Working Smart In Adobe Photoshop CS2 (2006)

How This Book Is Organized


Working smart isn't just about shortcuts. It involves looking at your entire workflow holistically, paying attention to everything from the hardware you use to your day-to-day work habits. This book is divided into four major parts, and each part addresses a different aspect of working smart:

Part I: Making Photoshop Your Own. Photoshop makes higher demands of your computer hardware than most other programs do, and raw CPU power is not the only factor that affects Photoshop performance. It pays to make sure that all of your computer's subsystemsCPU, RAM, and hard diskare configured for maximum Photoshop performance. The rest of this section helps you fit Photoshop to the requirements of your work by shaping your Photoshop workspace, developing efficient work habits, and creating presets for the tool configurations you use most often. If you lead a workgroup, you can create tutorials of your production standards and integrate the tutorials into the Help menu of Photoshop itself.

Part II: Saving Time While You Work. This part of the book focuses on specific tasks throughout an image-processing workflow, from opening files to printing. The book isn't big enough for me to cover every last detail of every workflow, but in this section I target some of the areas that can make a large difference in your productivity, such as selecting, using layers, and using transparency.

Part III: Processing Images Automatically. If you know what steps you require to process your images, and you know what settings you require for those steps, it seems natural that you should be able to make the computer remember all that for you. Photoshop gives you the power to do exactly that, by letting you condense and compress multiple-step sequences into a single step through actions (which are like macros), droplets, scripts, variables, and task-specific automation features such as the Image Processor.

Part IV: Making Photoshop a Great Team Player. Photoshop is often not the end of the line for an image. Images frequently move on to Web site programs, video-editing programs, or page-layout programs for print. This part provides workflow tips for using Photoshop documents with other programs, especially the Adobe Creative Suite.

Photoshop is both wide and deep. Many Photoshop books attempt to cover all areas of Photoshop in some detail. Other books focus on specific areas of Photoshop, such as compositing or color correction. This book doesn't fall squarely into either of those categories; instead, in this book I look at one aspect of the Photoshop workflowefficiencyand how it works across the entire program. I hope you find this book to be successful in that way.
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1

How Linux Works - What Every Super-User Should Know (2004)

Overview


This chapter is a guide to the Unix commands and utilities that you must know to get anything out of this book. This is preliminary material, and you may already know a substantial amount. Even if you think you're up to speed, though, take a few seconds to flip through the sections just to make sure.

You may be asking yourself, "I thought this was a book about Linux, not Unix?" Don't worry; this chapter is just getting you ready for working with the Linux system. Linux is a Unix flavor at heart. You will see the word "Unix" in this chapter more than "Linux" because you can take the information straight over to Solaris, BSD, and other Unix-flavored systems. Special care has been taken to avoid too many Linux-specific user interface extensions, not only so you will have a better background with other operating systems, but also because these extensions tend to be extremely unstable. You will be able to adapt to new Linux releases much more quickly if you know the core that does not change.

Although the material here may seem sparse, you need to convince yourself that Unix is not hard. Yes, most reports from the field are to the contrary, but in the end, Unix is nothing but a bunch of files and a few commands for manipulating those files. If you are familiar with other operating systems, you shouldn't have a problem. However, if you find the information in this preliminary chapter somewhat lacking, there are books with much more detail for beginners, such as UNIX for the Impatient [Abrahams] and Learning the UNIX Operating System
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1

Word Hacks - Tips & Tools For Taming Your Text (2004)

How This Book Is Organized


The book is divided into several chapters, organized by subject:

Chapter 1

This chapter offers a couple of introductory hacks to bring you up to speed on several of the topics and techniques used throughout the rest of the book, such as modifying menus and toolbars and creating and editing VBA macros.

Chapter 2

This chapter includes hacks for improving the way you interact with Word. Among other things, it shows you how to gain more control over view and options settings, as well as how to add custom images to toolbar buttons.


Chapter 3

This chapter explores Word's formatting features, including hacks on creating better image borders and custom watermarks. It also shows you how to create footnotes for tables.


Chapter 4

From advanced wildcard searching to automatic cross-referencing, the hacks in this chapter are all about editing efficiently. Several hacks in this chapter show you how to add features not built into Word, such as the ability to remove all hyperlinks or bookmarks in a document at once.


Chapter 5

This chapter includes hacks that show you how to take advantage of two of Word's most powerful features, and even how to use Word outlines to automatically generate attractive organizational charts.


Chapter 6

This chapter tackles some of Word's most aggravating annoyances, such as document bloat and corrupt registry data, and also shows you a few ways to hack your way around some of Word's built-in limitations.


Chapter 7

The hacks in this chapter offer some intermediate and advanced techniques for improving macro performance. In addition, there are hacks on moving beyond VBA basics and on doing things such as adding a progress bar to a macro and creating macros that automatically respond to application events.


Chapter 8

The hacks in this chapter show you how to take full advantage of Word's fields, which can be intimidating but offer powerful control over document content. Among other things, this chapter shows you how to easily add an interactive calendar to a form, perform advanced date calculations automatically, and sequentially number documents.

Chapter 9

In true hacking spirit, this chapter explores how to cajole and contort Word into doing things no word processor was meant to do, such as performing full system backups (with reporting) and emulating the popular Unix text editor Emacs. In addition, there are hacks on controlling Word from other Office applications and from three of the most popular scripting languages (Perl, Python, and Ruby), along with a hack on how to use VBScript's powerful regular expression functions from within Word.


Chapter 10, Word 2003 XML Hacks

This chapter shows you how important XML support is to Word 2003. There are several hacks on using XSLT (Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformations) to create, process, and edit Word documents, and even a hack on how to add a Google search feature to the Word 2003 Task Pane.
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1

Windows XP Hacks - Tips & Tools For Optimizing Your OS, 2nd Edition (2005)


How This Book Is Organized

This book is not a mere tips-and-tricks compendium that tells you where to click, where to drag, and what commands to type. It takes advantage of XP's flexibility and new features, recognizes that there are specific tasks you want to accomplish with the operating system, and offers you bite-size pieces of functionality that you can put to use in a few minutes. It also shows how you can expand on their usefulness yourself. To give you this kind of help, the book is organized into 13 chapters.

Chapter 1, Startup and Shutdown

With XP, startup and shutdown can mean much more than turning on your PC or selecting Shut Down from the Start menu. With hacks in this chapter, you can change the picture that appears on the startup screen, speed up the sometimes endless startup and shutdown processes, hack the Registry to control many different aspects of startup and shutdown, customize multiboot options, and much more.


Chapter 2, The User Interface

XP lets you change the way it looks and works more than any other version of Windows, and this chapter shows how to do it. Want a speedy, stripped-down version of the OS? It's in here. Want to build your own themes and find thousands more online? It's in here as well. So are hacks for controlling the Control Panel, Start menu, and taskbar; creating transparent windows; and building your own cursors and icons. It also shows you how to make your PC look and work like a Mac, and how to give Linux a try without having to actually install any software. The hacks don't stop there, so interface hackers might want to head here first.


Chapter 3, Windows Explorer

Windows Explorer provides a basic window into XP and lets you manage files and folders, among other tasks. When hacked, it does much more as well. This chapter shows how to customize folder icons and balloon tips, improve the context menu, find files fast by mastering the indexing service's query language, get more disk space by using NTFS compression, keep your PC secure with encryption, and more.


Chapter 4, The Web

You probably spend a significant portion of your computing life on the Web, so why not make the most of it? Want to find information fast, straight from your browser, without having to head off to sites like Google? This chapter teaches you how to do it. You can also kill pop ups, stop spyware, surf anonymously without a trace, and speed up file downloads. If you host your own web site, you'll find out secrets of using the built-in Internet Information Services (IIS) web server. The chapter also shows you how to hack the free browser Firefox, which some people consider the best browser on the planet. In addition, it teaches you how to surf the Internet ad-free and shows you how you can literally Google your desktop by using Google technology to search through your email and files. There are many more hacks here as well.


Chapter 5, Networking

XP was built for networking, and this chapter shows you how to take full advantage of it. Tweak your DNS settings for faster Internet access, make your home network run better, use command-line tools for trouble-free network operations, or get the most out of using the Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) for making inexpensive phone calls. This chapter helps you get the most out of XP's powerful, built-in ability to connect.


Chapter 6, Email

Email is both the greatest productivity-booster and the greatest time-waster known to humankind. This chapter ensures that you'll stop wasting time and get more out of email. Slam spam, open blocked file attachments in Outlook and Outlook Express, get better email software, and retrieve web-based email using a normal email client. And you'll learn many ways to get more out of Google's email service, Gmail. There's all that and more here.


Chapter 7, Wireless

It's an unwired world, and XP is at the center of it. XP was built with wireless in mind, includes built-in wireless discovery of networks, and because of that, makes it easy to set up home and corporate wireless networks, as well as connect to hotspots when people travel with their laptops or PDAs. So, in this chapter, you'll find out about wireless hackingeverything from war driving to finding wireless networks, protecting your home wireless network, using wireless encryption, solving hotspot woes, and more.


Chapter 8, Security

From the moment you turn on your PC and connect to the Internet or a network, you're in danger. Snoopers and intruders can try to get into your system; crackers might try to install Trojans to take control of your computer or turn it into a zombie and use it to launch attacks against other PCs or web sites. The hacks in this chapter, though, will show you how you can use the Internet and networks, and still be safe. You'll learn how to hide files and folders using encryption, how to test your PC's vulnerabilities, how to use firewalls to harden your PC against attacks, how to punch holes through firewalls, and more.


Chapter 9, The Registry

If you're going to hack XP, you'll need to use the Registry. It's that simple. This chapter goes beyond merely teaching you how to use the Registry and how it's organized (although it covers that in detail). It also shows you how to hack the Registry itselffor example, by offering hacks on how to use .reg files to edit the Registry safely, and how to track and restore Registry changes.


Chapter 10, Applications

XP comes with a basic suite of built-in utilities, with the emphasis on basic. But you can hack these basic utilities so that they're much more useful powerhouses. Store multiple clips on the Clipboard, extend your real estate with virtual desktops, build a better backup strategy, take better screenshots, or use a universal instant messenger. In addition to utilities, an operating system needs applications to do much of its work. So, this chapter shows you how to hack them as well. Have older Windows applications that have a hard time running under XP? This chapter shows you how to make sure they run. You can also use command-line shortcuts to customize how each application runs, open and create Microsoft documents without Microsoft Office, and more.


Chapter 11, Graphics and Multimedia

In XP, Windows gets serious about multimedia and graphics for the first time. In this chapter, you'll see how to get the most out of them, with hacks for saving streaming audio to your PC, making videos with Movie Maker, sharing music without the spyware, and converting images easily. Music lovers will find several ways to hack iTunes and how to take advantage of the new music format Ogg Vorbis.

Chapter 12, System Performance

No matter how fast your PC is, it's not fast enough. This chapter shows you ways to hack XP to juice up its performance. Get the most out of your RAM, use the Performance Console to speed up system performance, and use a variety of Registry hacks to make XP run. For those who have upgraded to SP2, or are considering it, you'll also see how to combat SP2 upgrade woes.


Chapter 13, Hardware

By itself, an operating system can't do a thing; it needs hardware to run on. In this chapter, you'll see how to use XP to hack your hardware. Remap your keyboard, set up a direct cable connection between PCs for a quick-and-dirty network, uncover "hidden hardware" with the Device Manager, and get better resolution on your laptop and your LCD screen. And yes, there are more hacks here as well.
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1

InDesign CS2 For Macintosh And Windows - Visual QuickStart Guide (2005)

Using This Book


If you have used any of the other Visual QuickStart Guides, you will find this book to be similar. Each chapter is divided into different sections that deal with a specific topic — usually a tool or command. For instance, the chapter on text has sections on creating text frames, typing text, selecting text, and so on.

Each of the sections contains numbered exercises that show you how to perform a specific technique. As you work through the steps, you gain an understanding of the technique or feature. The illustrations help you judge if you are following the steps correctly.

I've also sprinkled sidebars, printed in gray boxes, throughout the chapters. Some of these sidebars give you a bit of history or background for a specific feature. Other times, I've written out humorous stories about desktop publishing. These sidebars are the same as the little stories and anecdotes I tell my students in the classes I teach.


Instructions

You will find it easier to use this book once you understand the terms I am using. This is especially important since some other computer books use terms differently. Therefore, here are the terms I use in the book and explanations of what they mean.

Click refers to pressing down and releasing the mouse button on the Macintosh, or the left mouse button on Windows. You must release the mouse button or it is not a click.

Press means to hold down the mouse button, or a keyboard key.

Press and drag means to hold the mouse button down and then move the mouse. I also use the shorthand term drag. Just remember that you have to press and hold as you drag the mouse.
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1

Inside Delphi 2006 (2006)

Overview


Delphi, now in its 10th version, provides us with four programming languages: Delphi for Win32 and C++ for building Windows applications, and Delphi for .NET and C# for building applications that target the .NET platform. This book focuses on teaching you how to build applications using all four programming languages.

Generally speaking, this book is meant to be read from cover to cover because each chapter builds on the previous ones. But, since you may not have the time or the need to read the entire book, I’ve divided the material into three distinct sections to help you focus on what you want to learn:

Delphi for Win32 and C++ languages (Chapters 1 to 10)

VCL framework programming (Chapters 11 to 28)

.NET programming (Chapters 29 and 30)

The reasons for covering both C++ and Delphi in the first part of the book are pretty simple:

The Delphi IDE includes both C++ and Delphi for building Win32 applications, so why not have a book that describes both languages?

Delphi for Win32 and C++ use the same VCL framework for building Win32 applications. Why get two books that cover exactly the same topics, when you can have one book that describes a certain topic and provides both Delphi and C++ code examples?

The majority of Win32 source code on the web that is not written in Delphi is written in C/C++, so even if you’re a Delphi-only developer, it might be prudent to learn how to read, if not write, C++ code.

The book also covers, albeit not in great detail, C#, the “default” language of the .NET framework. Since C# borrows from both Delphi and C++, the first two parts of the book teach you C# programming, although it is never mentioned.

The VCL part of the book shows how to build Windows applications using the VCL framework. The majority of the material in this part is written in Delphi, because it would serve no purpose—except to bore you to death—to show all examples in both Delphi and C++. C++ is explicitly covered only when there are large differences between Delphi and C++. C++ material is also, in almost all cases, placed at the end of a chapter, so you can skip those sections if you’re not interested in learning C++.

Another reason why Delphi is the preferred language in this part of the book is that Delphi VCL projects can be easily converted to VCL.NET projects. This means that you can have a single code base that can be used to produce both standard Win32 and managed .NET applications.

Finally, the last two chapters of the book cover .NET related topics and the C# language, but not exclusively. These two chapters also describe Win32 topics, especially those that relate to .NET topics or were introduced in Delphi for Win32 because of .NET
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1

Inside Microsoft SQL Server 2005 - T-SQL Programming (2006)

Preface


This book and its predecessor—Inside Microsoft SQL Server 2005: T-SQL Querying—cover advanced T-SQL querying, query tuning, and programming in SQL Server 2005. They are designed for programmers and DBAs who need to write and optimize code in both SQL Server 2000 and 2005. For brevity, I'll refer to the books as Inside T-SQL Programming and Inside T-SQL Querying.

The books focus on practical common problems, discussing several approaches to tackle each. You will be introduced to many polished techniques that will enhance your toolbox and coding vocabulary, allowing you to provide efficient solutions in a natural manner.

The books unveil the power of set-based querying, and explain why it's usually superior to procedural programming with cursors and the like. At the same time, it teaches you how to identify the few scenarios where cursor-based solutions are superior to set-based ones.

The books also cover other much debated constructs—such as temporary tables, dynamic execution, XML and .NET integration—which hold great power, but at the same time great risk. These constructs require programmatic maturity. These books will teach you how to use them wisely, in efficient and safe ways where they are relevant.

The first book—Inside T-SQL Querying—focuses on set-based querying, and I recommend that you read it first. The second book—Inside T-SQL Programming—focuses on procedural programming and assumes you read the first book or have sufficient querying background.

Inside T-SQL Querying starts with three chapters that lay the foundation of logical and physical query processing required to gain the most from the rest of the chapters.

The first chapter covers logical query processing. It describes in detail the logical phases involved in processing queries, the unique aspects of SQL querying, and the special mindset you need to shift to in order to program in a relational, set oriented environment.

The second chapter covers physical query processing. It describes in detail the way the SQL Server engine processes queries, and compares and contrasts physical query processing with logical query processing. This chapter was written by Lubor Kollar. Lubor was a group program manager during the SQL Server 2005 development and his team was responsible for the "bottom" part of the Relational Engine—from query compilation and optimization to query execution, transactional consistency, backup/restore, and high availability. Table and Index Partitioning, Database Mirroring, Database Snapshot, Snapshot Isolation, Recursive Queries and other T-SQL query improvements, Database Tuning Advisor, and Online Index creation and maintenance were the major SQL Server 2005 features his team has been working on. Few people in the world probably know the subject of query optimization as well as Lubor does. I find it a privilege to have one of the designers of the optimizer explain it in his own words.

The third chapter covers a query tuning methodology we developed in our company (Solid Quality Learning) and have been applying in production systems. The chapter also covers working with indexes and analyzing execution plans. This chapter provides the important background knowledge required for the chapters that follow, which as a practice talk about working with indexes and analyzing execution plans. These are important aspects of querying and query tuning.

The chapters that follow delve into advanced querying and query tuning, where both logical and physical aspects of your code are intertwined. These chapters include: "Subqueries, Table Expressions, and Ranking Functions"; "Joins and Set Operations"; "Aggregating and Pivoting Data" (including a section about CLR user-defined aggregates, which was written by Dejan Sarka); "TOP and APPLY"; "Data Modification"; and "Graphs, Trees, Hierarchies, and Recursive Queries."

Appendix A covers pure logic puzzles. Here you have a chance to practice logical puzzles to improve your logic skills. SQL querying essentially deals with logic. I find it important to practice pure logic to improve your query problem-solving capabilities. I also find these puzzles fun and challenging, and you can practice them with the entire family. These puzzles are a compilation of the logic puzzles that I covered in my T-SQL column in SQL Server Magazine. I'd like to thank SQL Server Magazine for allowing me to share these puzzles with the book's readers.

The second book—Inside T-SQL Programming—focuses on programmatic T-SQL constructs and expands its coverage to treatment of XML and .NET integration. The topics it covers include: datatype-related problems, including XML and CLR user-defined types (UDTs); temporary tables; cursors; dynamic execution; views; user-defined functions, including CLR UDFs; stored procedures, including CLR procedures; triggers, including DDL and CLR triggers; transactions, including coverage of the new snapshot-based isolation levels; exception handling; and service broker.

The sections in the book that cover XML and .NET integration ("User-Defined Types," "User-Defined Functions," "Stored Procedures," and "Triggers") were written by Dejan Sarka. Dejan is a SQL Server expert, and he is extremely knowledgeable in the relational model. He has fascinating views about the way these new constructs can fit with the relational model when used sensibly. I found it important to have someone with a strong grasp of the relational model to cover these much debated areas of the product. All CLR code samples are provided in both C# and Visual Basic .NET.

The last chapter, covering Service Broker, was written by Roger Wolter. Roger is the program manager with the SQL Server development team in charge of Service Broker. Again, nothing like having the designer of a component explain it in his own words.

Last but not least, Steve Kass was the technical editor of the books. Steve is an extremely sharp guy. He is a SQL Server MVP, and he teaches mathematics at Drew University. He has extensive knowledge of SQL Server and logic, and his contribution to the books was invaluable.
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1

Honeypots For Windows (2005)

What’s In This Book?


The book has twelve chapters organized into three main parts.

By the time you get through reading this book, you should have an excellent understanding of honeypots in a Windows environment.

Note Many of the tools covered in this book are Windows ports of open-source Unix tools, like Honeyd, WinPcap, and Snort. All of these tools have been tested on Windows 98 and later Microsoft platforms, but most have been optimized for Windows 2000 and above. Menu options and screenshots were done on Windows 2000 and XP Professional computers, but most commands and screens are identical, no matter which Microsoft operating system you use. Every effort has been made to verify that all commands and utilities work across all current versions of Windows. Exceptions are noted when known.

Part One: Honeypots in General

Part One covers honeypot theory and topics common to all honeypots, along with the particular configuration requirements of a Windows-based environment.

Chapter 1 explains general honeypot theory and reasons to use honeypots. It discusses the main honeypot types, along with advantages and disadvantages of each choice. The chapter also covers hacking basics, such as attack model types and fingerprinting. Understanding the different hacking threats is essential to setting up and using a honeypot.

Chapter 2 describes the general setup and deployment of a honeypot, as well as how to attract hackers to it. Topics include how to decide where to place a honeypot and why. It covers the physical deployment issues involved in placing a honeypot, including hardening the host and configuring your network to route hacking traffic to your honeypot. It includes details on the problems introduced on switched networks and how to correctly configure your routing tables.

Part Two: Windows Honeypots

Part Two provides a detailed lesson in configuring and using Windows-based honeypots. Using an emulated honeypot in aWindows environment takes special consideration to make it appear as a Windows-based host. This means it should have the normal Windows ports open, run the normal Windows services, and respond in a predictable way. Chapter 3 defines normal behaviors, ports, and services on a Windows host, and tells you how to emulate them on a honeypot.

Chapter 4 describes using a real Windows operating system as a honeypot. It reveals what is the best Windows version to attract malicious hackers and presents hardening tips you can use to minimize compromise damage.

Chapters 5 through 7 focus on Honeyd, the most popular honeypot software in use today. Chapter 5 covers how to download and install Honeyd. Honeyd is a fantastic free tool, but like many other open-source programs, not particularly easy to configure. Chapter 6 begins deciphering the Honeyd configuration and provides several sample configuration files that you can adapt for your own needs. Chapter 7 explains how to use service scripts, which allow Honeyd to mimic basic applications, such as FTP, telnet, and IIS. Service scripts are very important in making a honeypot look like a real system.

Honeyd is the most popular and versatile honeypot software in use today, but it isn’t the easiest to use. In Chapter 8, we explore six other Windows-based honeypots with front-end graphical user interfaces that make for a more pleasant user experience. Each of these honeypots excels at different goals. The honeypots are Back Officer Friendly, LaBrea, SPECTER, KFSensor, PatriotBox, and Jackpot.

Part Three: Honeypot Operations

Part Three discusses a range of topics related to getting the most out of your honeypot.

Using a network traffic analyzer and understanding how to recognize and decode malicious network traffic is essential to honeypot operations. Chapter 9 discusses how to install and use various tools for analyzing network traffic. It begins with network protocol basics, reviewing the OSI model and TCP/IP suite, and then focuses on using Snort and Ethereal.

Chapter 10 covers the very important issues of monitoring, logging, alerting, and reporting. It discusses how to set up an alert system, how and what to log, and what reports you need to generate.

Honeypots can quickly gather copious amounts of information—sometimes an overwhelming amount. The ultimate success of your honeypot is determined by how well you interpret the attack evidence. Chapter 11 discusses techniques to use in the forensics analysis of your honeypot data.

Chapter 12 discusses analyzing malicious code by disassembling it. For new programmers, this involves learning assembly language, learning how to disassemble executables, and learning about malicious coding in general. Becoming a disassembler is not for the faint of heart, but with a moderate amount of effort and practice, it can reveal malware functions that cannot be found any other way.
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1

Inside Microsoft Windows Server 2003 (2003)

How to Use This Book


With the amount of information we are forced to consume everyday, it would be nice to simply skim over a few sentences in a paragraph to get the key points of the topic. That is what the Illustrated Network books are about. Each page has a graphic and concise text that makes key points quick to learn and review.

Like all books in the Illustrated Network series, this one is very detailed, yet it is written in way that makes it easy to comprehend. Eighty percent of what is commonly written about is filler information. What this book does is extract the twenty percent of the required information and places this information in an easy to use format. A similar format is used quite often with training material. As we all know, training must be done is a very structured and concise fashion and it must be delivered within a limited window of time. I have taken this quick learning concept further by using a combination of a text book and a training manual—producing the format of this book.

This book is built specifically to be used as both a reference manual and a text book. There is no reason to read it from cover to cover. A topic can simply be turned to and quickly learned without having to read the whole book.
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1

Inside Network Perimeter Security, 2nd Edition (2005)

Overview of the Book's Contents


We would like to introduce this book from a 50,000-foot view. Part I, "The Essentials of Network Perimeter Security," covers the first five chapters and serves as a foundation for later chapters. The first chapter presents an overview of everything we will talk about throughout the book. Other chapters in Part I discuss core perimeter security concepts, such as packet filtering, stateful firewalls, proxies, and security policy.

Part II, "Fortifying the Security Perimeter," comprises Chapters 6 through 11 and concentrates on additional components that make up a network security perimeter. Here, we examine the role of routers, virtual private networks (VPNs), network intrusion detection systems (IDSs), intrusion prevention systems (IPSs), and host-centric defense mechanisms.

Good design is covered in Part III, "Designing a Secure Network Perimeter," where we focus on integrating perimeter components into a unified defense architecture. Chapters 12 through 18 describe ways of achieving defense in depth that are appropriate for your needs and budgets, letting you apply what you have learned about security devices and approaches. In addition to discussing design fundamentals, we focus on topics such as resource separation, wireless network security, software architecture, and VPN integration. We also explain how to tune a security design to achieve optimal performance, and we look at several sample architectures.

Part IV, "Maintaining and Monitoring Perimeter Security," which comprises Chapters 19 through 24, concludes the book by answering the famous question, "How do you know?" It presents a discussion of understanding what the perimeter systems are telling us and of ensuring that the perimeter operates according to its design. We examine perimeter maintenance procedures, log analysis, and troubleshooting approaches. We also describe techniques for assessing the strength of your defenses and explain how to conduct an adversarial review of the network architecture. The last chapter summarizes defense-in-depth concepts that have been described throughout the book. It is a mirror in some sense of the first chapter, but it is used to wrap up prime concepts of the book.

We have also outfitted the book with two appendixes, where we provide sample Cisco access list configurations and discuss fundamentals of cryptography that are relevant to network defense. Designing, deploying, and maintaining a network security perimeter is a challenging journey, and we hope that our approach to network defense makes your path more comfortable.
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1

Windows Server 2003 Registry (2003)

The book contains the following chapters:

Chapter 1 contains an overview of the registry as it existed in all Windows NTbased operating systems. It provides a brief description of registry structure, valid data types, and methods used for storing registry data in Windows NT/2000, Windows XP, and Windows Server 2003. At the same time, it considers some kernel enhancements introduced with Windows XP and Windows Server 2003, which resulted in registry changes - for example, the removal of registry size limitation.

Chapter 2 is dedicated to various methods of backing up and restoring the registry. Even the most experienced Windows NT/2000 user should read this chapter carefully, since these procedures have changed significantly in the newer release.

Chapter 3 discusses the user interface of the registry editor (Regedit.exe). Most experienced Windows NT/2000 users should remember that Windows NT 4.0 and Windows 2000 actually included two registry-editing utilities - Regedt32.exe, the more powerful utility with extended capabilities but an old-fashioned interface, and Regedit.exe - the newer utility with an enhanced UI, which lacked, however, some powerful features of Regedt32. In Windows XP and Windows Server 2003, the situation has changed, and there is now only one registry-editing tool - Regedit.exe, which combines the functionality of the two registry editors. Beginners can use this chapter as a brief reference on this tool (which, by the way, Microsoft is positioning as one of the reliability enhancements).

Chapter 4 looks at the simplest methods of configuring the operating system. This chapter describes both the method of configuring the system using administrative utilities and the method that requires registry editing. Some of the tips provided here also apply to Windows NT and Windows 2000, while others are specific to Windows XP and Windows Server 2003.

Chapter 5 discusses the problem of storing hardware information in the registry. It also provides basic information on Plug and Play architecture implementation in Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Windows Server 2003, including two new kernel-mode subsystems - Plug and Play Manager and Power Manager. Also covered are the OnNow initiative and the ACPI specification.

Chapter 6 contains a detailed description of the boot process for all Windows NTbased operating systems, including Windows NT/2000, Windows XP. and Windows Server 2003. It describes the registry's role in the boot process and provides a brief overview of the methods of eliminating boot failures. Special attention is focused on built-in reliability enhancements, including safe mode, Driver Rollback, Recovery Console, and code signing options such as Windows File Protection, System File Checker, and File Signature Verification.

Chapter 7 can be used as a brief reference to the registry keys.

Chapter 8 discusses network settings in the registry for Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Windows Server 2003.

Chapter 9 has a special place in this book, because it discusses one of the most important topics, namely, various aspects of protecting and securing the registry. Besides universal recommendations suitable for all Windows NT-based operating systems, special attention has been drawn to security enhancements introduced with Windows XP and Windows Server 2003, such as Software Restriction Policies.

Chapter 10 discusses the problems of managing user working environments, including user profiles and group policies.

Chapter 11 explores the relationship between Active Directory and the local registry, covering such important topics as Group Policies, Windows Installer technology and Active Directory Class Store - a kind of "super-registry" or "centralized registry".

Chapter 12 contains recommendations and tips on eliminating the most common problems (including boot failures) by means of editing the registry. It is of special interest for system administrators and technical support personnel.

Chapter 13 is dedicated to advanced customization and troubleshooting topics.

Chapter 14 provides a brief overview of the handy third-party registry utilities.

Chapter 15 provides an overview of automating registry management using Windows Script Host (WSH). Of course, it can't be considered a reference on Windows automation and scripting languages (this topic deserves a special book). However, we will consider the registry-manipulation methods provided by WSH, then create a simple example illustrating their usage, and then produce a small but really useful script.
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1

Windows Server 2003 In A Nutshell (2003)

How to Use This Book


To see how useful this book can be, check out the next few sections.

Part I: Transitioning

The first part of this book includes two chapters designed to help ease the pain of NT and W2K administrators as you transition to the new WS2003 platform.

Chapter 1, NT 2003, is aimed mainly at NT admins and highlights important differences between administering NT and WS2003. The first part of the chapter lists the WS2003 counterparts to NT administrative tools, utilities, and commands. The rest of the chapter describes new features and provides various tips to help make the transition easier.

Chapter 2, 2000 2003, targets W2K admins and highlights differences between W2K and WS2003. The chapter begins by describing significant changes to administrative tools, utilities, and the GUI. It concludes by summarizing the new features and enhancements that make WS2003 a more secure, powerful, and manageable platform than W2K.

Although Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 are intended for different audiences, I highly recommend that both NT and W2K admins read both chapters to get the most comprehensive view of the changes and enhancements in the new platform.

Part II: Alphabetical Reference

The second part is the meat of the book. It consists of three reference chapters whose topics are arranged in alphabetical order.

Chapter 3, Task Map, lists more than 600 different administrative tasks organized under more than a hundred different headings. Most entries provide task-oriented references to topics in Chapter 4 or commands in Chapter 5 where you can find detailed information. The remaining entries either outline the steps for performing the task or describe a Group Policy setting relating to its administration. Think of Chapter 3 mainly as a quick entry point for the reference material in later chapters, with some extra goodies thrown in for good measure.

Chapter 4, GUI Reference, covers the concepts, tools, and tasks for administering WS2003 from the GUI. The chapter is divided into broad topic areas ranging from Active Directory to WINS and, together with Chapter 5, forms the core of this book. You can either browse a topic in this chapter to learn more about its administration or look up a specific task in it using the Task Map in Chapter 3 or the Index.

Chapter 5, Command Reference, lists more than a hundred different commands and scripts that can be used to administer various aspects of WS2003 from the command line. Almost a third of these commands are new to WS2003. For each command, the syntax is presented together with examples, notes, and cross-references to topics in Chapter 4. The enhancements to commands in WS2003 mean that Windows now rivals Unix in the ability to manage the platform from the command line.

Part III: Resources

An appendix and an acronym list round out the book.

Appendix A, lists some web sites that those administering WS2003 may find useful.

Glossary, helps you navigate the acronym maze for WS2003 from ACL to WPA.
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1

Windows Forms Programming In CSharp (2003)

Who Should Read This Book?


When writing this book, I had two target audiences in mind. I wanted to provide real-world WinForms coverage for both the programmer who has already programmed in .NET and for the programmer who hasn't. Toward that end, I briefly introduce core .NET topics as they come up. However, the .NET Framework itself is a large area that this book doesn't pretend to cover completely. Instead, when I think more information would be useful, I reference another work that provides the full details. In particular, I find that I've referenced Essential .NET, by Don Box, with Chris Sells, a great deal, making it a good companion to this book. In this same category, I also recommend Pragmatic ADO.NET, by Shawn Wildermuth, Advanced .NET Remoting, by Ingo Rammer, .NET Web Services, by Keith Ballinger, and Applied Microsoft .NET Framework Programming, by Jeffrey Richter. (For more details on these books, see the Bibliography.)

Two core .NET topics are of special importance to WinForms programmers, and I cover them in more detail in Appendix B: Delegates and Events and in Appendix C: Serialization Basics. The coverage of delegates and events is particularly important if you're new to .NET, although I don't recommend diving into that topic until you've got a WinForms-specific frame of reference (which is provided about one-third of the way through Chapter 1: Hello, Windows Forms).

One other note: Many years ago, I wrote my first five-day training course. The topic was Windows 95 and included a few hours of coverage on the new controls: what they looked like, what their properties, methods, and events were, and how to program against them. Those hours seemed like days both for me and for the students. The details of a particular control are interesting only when you're putting that control to use, and when that time comes, the control-specific documentation and IntelliSense do a marvelous job of giving you the information you need. Toward that end, this book covers none of the standard controls completely. Instead, as each control is interesting in the context of the current topic—such as the DataGrid control in Chapter 13: Data Binding and Data Grids—that control is covered appropriately. Also, Chapter 8: Controls and Chapter 9: Design-Time Integration introduce the broad range of categories of controls that WinForms provides, including the category of nonvisual controls called components in .NET.

Finally, to give you a visual to go with all the controls and components and to introduce you to each one's major functionality, Appendix D: Standard WinForms Components and Controls provides a list of the standard controls and components. I wouldn't think of wasting your time by attempting to be more thorough than the reference documentation that comes with the .NET Framework SDK and Visual Studio .NET. Instead, this book focuses on the real-world scenarios that aren't covered in detail elsewhere.
Chris Sells
April 2003

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1

Windows Forms 2.0 Programming (2006)


Who Should Read This Book?

When writing this book, we wanted to provide real-world Windows Forms coverage for programmers who've programmed in .NETand those who haven't. To that end, we briefly introduce core .NET topics as they come up. However, we don't pretend to cover the .NET Framework completely. It's too large a topic. Instead, when we think more information would be useful, we reference another work that provides the full details. In particular, you'll find that we've referenced Essential .NET, by Don Box, with Chris Sells, a great deal, making it a good companion to this book. In the same category, we also recommend Advanced .NET Remoting, by Ingo Rammer, and Applied Microsoft .NET Framework Programming, by Jeffrey Richter. (For more details on these books, see the Bibliography.)

One core .NET topic is of special importance to Windows Forms programmers, and we cover it in more detail in Appendix C: Delegates and Events. This coverage is particularly important if you're new to .NET, although we don't recommend diving into that topic until you've got a Windows Forms-specific frame of reference (which is provided about one-third of the way through Chapter 1: Hello, Windows Forms).

Also of particular importance to former (or soon-to-be former) MFC programmers, we've provided Appendix B: Moving from MFC, and Appendix F: Document Management. Although Windows Forms doesn't provide all the features of MFC, we've worked hard on the material and code samples in this book to plug most of the gaps.

One other note: Many years ago, one of the authors wrote his first five-day training course. The topic, Windows 95, included a few hours of coverage on the new controls: what they looked like, what their properties, methods, and events were, and how to program against them. Those hours seemed like days for everyone involved. The details of a particular control are interesting only when you're putting it to use, and when that time comes, the control-specific documentation and Visual Studio's IntelliSense help support do a marvelous job of giving you the information you need.

To that end, this book covers none of the standard controls completely. Instead, when a control is interesting in the context of the current topicsuch as the DataGridView control in Chapter 17: Applied Data Bindingwe cover that control appropriately. Also, to give you a list of all the components and controls and to introduce you to each one's major functionality, Appendix D: Component and Control Survey provides a list of the standard controls and components. We wouldn't think of wasting your time by attempting to be more thorough than the reference documentation that comes with the .NET Framework software development kit (SDK) and Visual Studio 2005. Instead, this book focuses on the real-world scenarios that aren't covered in detail elsewhere. Finally, to help you understand the differences between components and controls and how to build both, we've provided Chapter 9: Components and Chapter 10: Controls.
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Windows Forensics And Incident Recovery (2004)


Book Layout

The chapters of this book are provided in a progressive sequence, each chapter building on the information discussed in the previous chapter. The progression through the chapters is intended to provide a thorough understanding of the issues presented when faced with performing live investigations of security incidents on Windows systems. However, several of the chapters can also be standalone references.

The chapters and appendices in this book are provided in the following sequence:

Chapter 1:
Introduction is, well, this chapter. The introduction provides an overview of the book and why it was written, what the reader should expect, and the target audience of the book.

Chapter 2:
How Incidents Occur addresses...well...how incidents happen. Knowing how incidents occur helps administrators understand how to protect their systems against them, limit the damage that is done, and provide some indication of malicious activity if other alarms fail to go off. Knowing and understanding the conditions that lead to incidents helps administrators understand how to prevent them from occurring and how to detect them when they do occur.

Chapter 3:
Data Hiding describes various ways that many kinds of data can be hidden on a live system (anything from text files to executables, such as games and malware). This chapter not only addresses how attackers and automated software such as worms may hide files on a compromised system, but it also describes what kind of information is hidden in files by applications used on a daily basis (i.e., Microsoft's Indexing Service, as well as Office applications). The chapter also addresses how that hidden information can be discovered. Some of this information can be very revealing and extremely sensitive to organizations and document authors.

Chapter 4:
Incident Preparation addresses steps that should be taken to prepare for incidents. The goal is to provide system administrators and IT managers with the information they need to set up systems within their networks in such a manner as to prevent incidents from occurring and to detect them when they do occur. The necessary steps involve system configuration and hardening, as well as taking steps to design and configure the infrastructure to establish a defense in depth posture.

Chapter 5:
Incident Response Tools describes many freely available software tools used in incident response and forensics activities. Most of the tools described in this chapter are freely available on the Internet (be sure to read the licensing information when you download them!). Other tools are native to Windows systems. Some of the tools listed are Perl scripts, used to collect information and demonstrate how data can be collected from a Windows system.

Chapter 6:
Developing a Methodology takes something of a different approach in walking through the development of an incident response methodology. The chapter is written as a story about a system administrator who has a series of dreams and learns lessons about incident response from each previous dream. In his dreams, the system administrator walks through some of the same problems and issues experienced by system administrators every day, as well as how to address and resolve those issues.

Chapter 7:
Knowing What To Look For describes the fingerprints of various types of malware, from network backdoors to rootkits. This chapter not only points out what to look for when you're trying to determine if a system has been infected with spyware, network backdoors, or a rootkit, but it also discusses and demonstrates tools and techniques for detecting this malware.

Chapter 8:
Using the Forensic Server Project describes how to set up and use the Forensic Server Project and the associated client components.

Chapter 9:
Scanners and Sniffers discusses various port scanning and network sniffing tools and how to use them. There are also several network traffic captures available on the accompanying CD, with questions about each of these captures asked in Chapter 9. The reader should use the tools described in the chapter to answer the questions.
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