ACCU Home page ACCU Conference Page
Search Contact us ACCU at Flickr ACCU at GitHib ACCU at Facebook ACCU at Linked-in ACCU at Twitter Skip Navigation

Search in Book Reviews

The ACCU passes on review copies of computer books to its members for them to review. The result is a large, high quality collection of book reviews by programmers, for programmers. Currently there are 1949 reviews in the database and more every month.
Search is a simple string search in either book title or book author. The full text search is a search of the text of the review.
    View all alphabetically
Title:
Hardening Apache
Author:
Tony Mobily
ISBN:
1-59059-378-2
Publisher:
Apress
Pages:
270pp
Price:
$29.99/£18-
Reviewer:
Richard Lee
Subject:
unix
Appeared in:
16-5
The aim of this book is to provide a starting point for anyone needing to secure an Apache server. Each chapter deals with a different security issue before pointing the reader at a few good sites for further information. The author assumes a Unix-derived operating system but half of the book still remains useful to Windows.

The first chapter illustrates how this book differs from others. There is brief introduction to digital signatures and encryption before explaining how to verify the download has not been tampered with. Instead of just providing commands to install Apache, the author immediately delves into testing for problems including steps to remove vulnerabilities.

While the first chapter may follow a cookbook approach, the book aims to be more than just a simple set of recipes. It also explains how the server may get compromised, to look for suspicious behaviour in logs and web sites to visit to keep up-to-date with emerging security issues.

Given the responsibility of setting up an Apache based server, should you buy this book? It boils down to whether you can find all the information you need from the Internet or if you prefer a little helping hand along the way.