This is the best book about Intrusion Signatures published yet.
I teach computer security at a local university, and with the only help of this book, I could take care of all the practical aspects of my last course. If you have already a good background on this field, and read and understand thoroughly the book, then you can afford any related security certification test.
Chapters 3 through 17, present several well documented cases, which, in turn, are discussed following the same standard:
- Presentation
- Source of Trace
- Detect Generated by
- Probability the Source Address Was spoofed
- Attack Description
- Attack Mechanism
- Correlations
- Evidence of Active Targeting
- Severity
- Defense Recommendations
- Questions

Chapter 1 introduces the reader to Analysis of Logs (including Snort, Tcpdump, and Syslog), IDS, and Firewalls. Even being a quick review, it is quite useful, though.
Chapter 2 explains the way the cases are studied.

The covered vulnerabilities and attacks include:
- Internet Security Threats
- Routers and Firewalls Attacks
- IP Spoofing
- Networks Mapping and Scanning
- Denial of Service
- Trojans
- Assorted Exploits
- Buffer Overflows
- IP Fragmentation
- False Positives
- Crafted Packets

At the bottom line, this is one of the 5 best computer security books I ever read. Even for non experts, the book can be a valuable tool to improve the understanding on this field.
Try it.

I read this book out of general interest and a need to dig deeper into the technical aspects of security, and intrusion detection in particular. For that, this title is perfect!

It's great to learn intrusion detection, packet analysis, forensics, attack methodologies, attack recognition, and similar topics. And oh, by the way, if you have any interest at all in certification, Intrusion Signatures and Analysis is the study guide for one of the hottest new certs there is: SANS GIAC Intrusion Detection In Depth.

A must-have for the serious network security professional, Intrusion Signatures And Analysis opens with an introduction into the format of some of the more common sensors and then begins a tutorial into the unique format of the signatures and analyses used in the book. Readers will find page after page of signatures, in order by categories as well as a case study section on how attacks have shut down the networks and web sites of Yahoo, and E-bay and what those attacks looked like. As an added feature, the collaborative authors Stephen Northcutt; Mark Cooper; Matt Fearnow; and Karen Frederick included review questions with throughout the book to help readers be sure they comprehend the traces and material that has been covered. Intrusion Signatures And Analysis is a recommended resource for the SANS Institute GIAC certification program. 448 pp.

How can two brothers who come from the same tragic background turn out so differently? In author E.D. Johnson's The Mark of Cain this is exactly what happens. Marshall Garnett is an R&B superstar who has everything going for him: a beautiful young wife, a solid singing career, money, and and a penchant for excess. Marshall is so caught up in himself that he does not see things happening right in front of his face.

One thing is for sure with Marshall, he will not go back to being the poor boy from Newark, NJ that he began life as. Michael Garnett, who is also known as Malik, has decided that he is going to change the world and make it a better place for Black people. He so believes in his cause to rid the world of all bad white people, that he joins an underground group called the Cell. Malik has decided to sacrifice everything in favor of the cause. Malik and Marshall have been out of touch for years. But even though Marshall wasn't exactly sure of where his brother was he always managed to support him finacially and Malik has followed Marshall's singing career.

The Mark of Cain is a story that has a little bit of everything going on: death, drugs, and destruction. Some parts of the story dragged and a lot of the questions were left unanswered. This story has a lot of potential, but it just seems to fizzle out at the end. On the RAW scale it is a 3.

Reviewed by Simone

The Mark of Cain by E.D.Johnson is an intriguing and suspenseful debut novel. I read an excerpt for the first few chapters which left me wanting more so I knew I had to read the rest of the novel to see how the story would end. Johnson introduces us to brothers Marshall and Malik who were separated during childhood and would go on to become very different individuals. E. D. Johnson has written an intriguing tale of national conspiracy and fraternal deception. As you roam the pages with Marshall and Malik, Johnson will take you inside the scintillating environment of the entertainment industry and the Black paramilitary underground. Johnson will introduce us to divas, drama, drugs, death as well as music, madness, mayhem and murder.

Johnson will take us on one rollercoaster after another as we twist, dip and turn through this suspenseful read. As I mentioned earlier it was the intrigue and suspense that enticed me and made me want more of this novel'unfortunately the characterization left me hanging'I felt like there were too many loose ends which didn't make any sense and which weren't tied up. Maybe a sequel is in the works but right now I feel like I was just left hanging. Additionally, I felt the book went overboard with the stereotypical portrayal of African Americans'I know there are some folks who think that all African Americans are lazy, slothful and unintelligent, however, I don't like being portrayed or leaving that impression with anyone. On a positive note, Johnson does provide insight into the world of glitz, glamour and politics and his writing makes you want more.

I truly enjoyed The Mark of Cain. The characters seem so real, that I actually thought I knew them. After reading this interesting story it left me thinking about the following questions. Can money really buy happiness? Am I my brother's keeper? When do my brother become his own keeper?

I am bought into the philosophy that the ability to effectively measure operational performance is key to achieving excellence. Unfortunately, this book provides little useful information. This is one of those 'advocacy supersedes real content' books.

Substantially Unsubstantial

Keeping Score is a good high-level review of the importance of metrics in strategy-driven organizations. Brown employs Kaplan & Norton's balanced scorecard methodology to illustrate the relationship between measurement and strategy. He doesn't really deliver much more than you would find in Kaplan & Norton's classic Balanced Scorecard book. I would like to have seen more suggested metrics around the various "themes": financial performance, customer satisfaction, product/service quality, process and operation performance, supplier performance, and employee satisfaction. I know macro- and micro-metrics are organization-specific; however, there are "generic" financial and satisfaction metrics he could offer. The Measurement System Self-Assessment 50 -item survey illustrated in the book is a great resource. It can easily be customized, automated and administered to stakeholders responsible for developing measurement systems. I applaud Brown for consistently reinforcing the formative rather than purely summative evaluation model. That is, any measurement system must contain historical (lagging), current, and forecasting (leading) measures. Those systems that are driven by summative data (i.e., historical) do not serve the real purpose of a measurement system, which is to allow stakeholders to make well-informed and better business decisions. Oftentimes, Brown downplays the complexity of developing and implementing a measurement system. He makes statements such as "Measurement is easy" and "Designing your own new and improved measurement system may not be a much work as you think..." These kinds of statements are worrisome and misleading because developing a robust measurement system aligned with organizational strategy is no simple feat. Nor, should it be. One extremely important area that is only slightly addressed is that of system maintenance and integrating the system into business processes. Once a measurement system has been established clear guidelines should be established as to how the data will be employed and used to make decisions. A truly strategic organization will incorporate the measurement system into the daily operations of the organization.

I ordered Mark Graham Brown's "Keeping Score" just as I got involved with a Balanced Scorecard implementation. As we worked through the process of designing our internal scorecard I found this slim volume (<200 pages) an invaluable aid. From the introduction through to the last chapter, I found this book full of practical ideas and advice. For instance, one of my personal pet peeves is the short shrift most larger companies give to the value of their people. In chapter 10: "Measuring Employee Satisfaction", Mr. Brown addresses topics such as the short-sightedness of improving profits through downsizing and how a balanced scorecard can help underline this mistake. He ends the book with a practical 10 item list "The Key To Successful Plans". After all the theory, I was glad to have a roadmap handy. I'd recommend this book to anybody who is contemplating a new scorecard, or rehabbing an existing one.

A nonlinear story that can get confusing if you are unaware of the JLA. I thought it was a little hard to follow a times with all of it's "wild" layout.

With the Midsummer's Nightmare the league is returned to greatness. No more second stringers only the big guns. This book reprints the entire three issue limited series form 1996 the year heroes returned fromt he dark ages.

IT is no longer an era of grim and gritty heroes who you are not sure if you should be rooting for. This book shows you that heroes are good and are looking to save the world. A really fun story that captures the imagination with its wide scope and properly using all seven of the Justice Leaguers. After reading this you will know something about each one that you may not have known before. The Justice League is now a group of the most powerful heroes on the planet, they may not always like each other but they can put those differences aside to save the world. I recomend this book to anyone who is a fan of the heroes. Anyone who always said the League is cool but they just aren't breathtaking. Well this book is certainly a start int he right direction not just for the Justice League but comics in general.

JUSTICE LEAGUE: A MIDSUMMER'S NIGHTMARE accomplished what I wanted it to do, re-establish the true core of the Justice League of America. Originally purchased in the mini-series format, it combines the Super Seven against Doctor Destiny to unwrap the loopy world they have been all trapped on. Definitely for the hard-core JLA fan, of which I am. This version of the team is the best one out of the three that have existed so far.

The book is an attempt to make sense of many facts in regards to the possibilities of tech. The result is a long magazine article which gets exhausting because each page has the most and best, etc... There are other books that have the same information but are better written.

The Playful World is a fascinating look at the future of computers and nanotechnology, and of wonders which may very well come to pass in the next decade or so (If Moore's Law continues to hold true, by 2012 we'll have reached the atomic level, and there will be supercomputers the size of a grain of sand). Pesce has been involved in the forefront of some of these advances, so he knows his stuff, and his enthusiasm for the potentials of this field is evident throughout the book. If the book has a fault, it is that he downplays or ignores the dangers inherent in the use of this technology, e.g., what's to prevent someone from releasing "spy dust", or clouds of nano-cameras, into an area, or billions of nano-surgeons to lobotomize an entire population? This book may be nothing new for those already immersed in the computer field, but for anyone else, it is required reading.

This is a book I wish I had written. When I picked up this book, I was amazed at how many subjects Mark covered that I was interested in too. Everything from Lego Mindstorms, Eric Drexler's Nanotechnology, Richard Feynman's talk on "More room at the bottom" that was the inspiration for Nanotechnology and many more. This book covers so much ground and describes many very interesting ideas and technologies. Pesce was the designer of VRML, Virtual Reality Modeling Language, which enables web pages to display 3D scenes and has been involved in the forefront of emerging technology for a while, so he is very qualified to give us the whirlwind tour of these "Mind Toys".

He takes off from where Seymour Papert's Mindstorms left us with technologies that create toys that help us to develop our mental models of the world. Toys that make us think.

As a generation of children grow up playing with Lego Mindstorms, Furbys, AIBO's etc.. they will develop their mental faculties that will come into play as they define the future.

I grew up with a BBC micro and started programming adventure games in BASIC, which opened up a whole new world to me. As a generation we played computer games while growing up. These were rich interactive environments that left us feeling unchallenged in a schooling system, which was still geared towards to old teaching techniques. These techniques seemed totally inadequate in coping with children who could solve complex mathematical problems at home whilst programming. So I am not sure how the schools of today handle children who are building robots and playing with toys that they can not only interact with, but ones which can learn and change as they are interacted with.

Do we need to change the way we approach education? Instead of complaining that children have MTV (Short) attention spans, we should be creating an education system that can cope with the speed at which these young minds are working at. I think we should be encouraging children to be thinking faster and day dreaming and using their imaginations, instead of trying to get them to fit an out dated model that will leave them totally unprepared for an ever more complex world.

I digress, but these are thoughts that come to mind while reading this book, as you whisked off on this tour of future mind toys.

If you can't tell, I love this book! Anyone interested in toys that can help them or their children think, should read this book.

Let me explain how this works (in Secret Societies). If the writer calls the book 'Secrets and Lies' then you have been told that the book is a book containing secrets and lies. This absolves the writer of his responsibilty to tell the truth (You have been secretly informed). This book is a blatant attack on all things not-Christian in the same manner as the murderous Crusades and the horrendous (Christian) Spanish Inquisition!

Why doesn't this author come right out and say that if you do not believe in his god that you will be destroyed (just like Hitler murdered the Jews)? Because he does! This is done in a more clever way through secrets and lies and disguising the genocide as a holy act. The persecution of all religions (or beliefs) non-Christian is a hostile act upon humanity and this book attempts to persuade the reader that this same old lie (that everything non-Christian is Evil and invented as a distraction from the 'truth' by Satan) was some discovery made by investigating all possible 'other' beliefs. This book disgusted me and I would not reccommend it. I don't believe anything this writer has written.

I read this book knowing that the author converts to Christianity at the end but I was interested in his New Age experiences. His experiences were mainly that he sought power. He did not seek to grow spiritually in order to become closer to the divine but to gain power.

As a pagan, I thought I would get insights into someone who had a bad experience with the occult but he was seeking a different goal than most people I know.

Unfortunately, I did not feel he described his characters well, including himself. Maybe until he grew up, he was a shallow as he depicted himself, but I find that hard to believe. His best fleshed out character was his wife, who was a Wiccan.

The book was very tolerant and described the other religions well but just not well written.

I have been a Christian for most of my life and I am not familiar with the authors encounters. I know that many people dismiss the strange tales that come from stories like this as being something from the imagination. I am familiar with the truth that is in Christ and this book has opened my eyes to the truth that is in the spirit world also. Buy it then give it to a friend.

I buy a lot of books. In general I average about $600/year in books. I hold an MSEE and an MBA. So I buy a lot of business and technical books.
This is the first time that I feel that a book I baught was so worthless that I felt it my duty to write about it.
Sometimes it is hard to keep voluminous books about a particular area. So I thought I could buy a condensé that just reminds me what I need to remember if need be.
Well, I got the wrong book. This is the lowest level book I have come across and I am surprised it's writen by so called "eminent" professors and endorsed by so called "Harvard business school" professors.
A blunt breach of credibility for those who wrote this leaflet and those who endorsed it.

This is a good BASIC LEVEL reference book for MBA studies. It shows the basic theories e.g. in strategy, finance, accounting etc. If you need deeper & focused knowledge of any of those areas, maybe you should buy another book (e.g. Portable MBA in Stretegy).

During the tech boom in 2000 I snared a job with a Fortune 500 technology company. I was bright but as a history major my business knowledge was limited to what I had in econ 101 and CNN MoneyWatch. Needless to say I needed some help. Boom this book was recommended and I went from lost to in command in a matter of months. Written by the professors at UVA's highly regarded Darden School of Business this book covers all aspects of an MBA from Marketing to finance and then some. For all you who want to be a VP someday I hardily endorse this book.

I bought this book as an author of fiction, hoping to get my first novel accepted by a publisher. The book seemed to be advertised for this purpose, so I bought it. I found it almost completely useless for my purposes, and my low rating of it reflects this.

The book may be very useful for other people. It's for someone who is doing the marketing of the book to the public. The advice for this may be great (I don't know as I'm not doing that). It also gives lists of resources which the marketer can use, but these are heavily biased toward the USA.

If you are trying to sell a book to the public in the USA, this may be just the book for you. But it was no use to me.

I really enjoyed this book. It is easy to read and gives a writer great tips on marketing and publicity. I recommend this book highly. Rick FrishmanPres. Planned TV Arts (NYC)Co- author GUERRILLA PUBLICITY and GUERRILLA MARKETING FOR WRITERS

I'm currently working on two ideas for non-fiction books. One is about current use (and mis-use) of English, the other a book of quotations.
I found this book to be very helpful. I liked that it put things in as concise a manner as possible, getting directly to the point.
I'd recommend it to anyone who's into publishing, self-publishing or marketing of a book. By reading this first, you'll probably save yourself from making mistakes and wasting money on wrong turns.
So, I'd say to check it out before proceeding further with your book idea.

Well researched, with just the right amount of open-mindedness and skpeticism. However, at the end of the book, I was taken aback by what appeared to be a full-scale defense of the thesis that UFOs are really flying saucers with little green men inside. I kept re-reading this section of the book to see if this was a joke. It appears not to be. Anyone who has seen a crop circle will stand in awe of its majesty and mystery, but to go from that to belief in little green guys is too much of a leap from me. But, then again, maybe I am a dummy, and I didn't fully understand this part.

All in all, though, a very worthwhile read.

This is a book that will inspire a paradigm shift in your own thinking. I discovered this book while conducting a recent search for academic works in the field of the philosophy of parapsychology. I've read each of the recent (past 20 years or so) books in this genre and this one is the best by far. It is thorough, comprehensive, interesting to say the least, and well written. This is now the book I recommend to friends and acquaintances more than any other.

If a book is judged by the impact it has on the way you view and understand the world and thus the impact it has on your life, it's the best book I've read since Plato's 'Republic' and Raymond Moody's 'Life After Life' in college. And I haven't exactly been a slouch since college; I'm a graduate student at St. John's College, the 'Great Books' school, so I'd like to think I know a little about books and what makes them great. (This last sentence is NOT intended to be about me, but to place my recommendation of this book in some context for the benefit of readers trying to decide whether to buy this book considering some of the negative comments in some of the other reviews here.)

Let me put it this way; for the week after I bought it I literally could not put it down except for obligatory commitments and for sleeping. I even continued reading while eating my meals!

In short, buy it, read it and I promise you it will be the best money you've ever spent to expand your horizons.

Paradigm Wars is an amazing book that is not for the fainthearted or closedminded. You will not pick it up, read it through in a few sittings and feel as though you have gotten all you want. You will go back again and again. For example, imagine what a chapter entitled "Galactic Destiny" might contain that could stretch your imagination and blow your mind.

Mark Woodhouse has managed to produce a work that exists somewhere between academic and pop genres, which provides the reader with a comprehensive overview of major topics of the New Age in an extremely readable style. Each chapter can actually stand alone as an individual book, if one were so inclined, and this reader was delighted to see the length and depth of the topics. If that were not enough, there are 35 pages of footnotes as a junping off place for further investigation.

With over thirty years of academic achievement, Dr. Woohouse has the credentials to be taken very seriously in an arena that is so often misrepresented and misunderstood. As a philosopher he presents divergent points of view and then presents his own conclusions. Readers may agree or not. That's not the point. Presenting current thinking is what he has done so well. That the paradigm amy change tomorrow is not only probable but expected.

This reader, for one, is looking forward to a sequel and, in the meantime, sharing Paradigm Wars with people I am guesing are ready for it. Not everyone is.

The author's disdain for progressive rock negates the book's credibility as a resource for all music fans. One star.

I don't know enough about the other bands presented to adequately judge the accuracy of the entire book, but if the entry on U2 is any indication, this book is entirely unsubstantiated. The author notes, for example, that U2 have "never inspired universal acclaim" and that the voices in favor of the band are "matched by the equally vocal contempt of a legion of detractors." Other than this author, I have never read any contempt. I have read occasionally unimpressed reviewers, responding to such albums as, say Rattle and Hum, or to the pretentions of the PopMart tour, but U2's grammy awards, sold out concert tours and extensive coverage in magazines (almost always praising the band's music) indicate that this author has an ax to grind. The very sentence "...in spite of their success, U2 have often found themselves out of step with the prevailing zeitgeist of pop" is ironic. Is being "in step" notable? Is that the condition which cues the contempt of the "legion of detractors" that the author never really names? At a recent series of U2 concerts, I spotted Elvis Costello, Bush, Gwen Stefani...are those the "fashionable" for which U2 are "anathema" according to the author? Maybe I'm simply offended...but it seems the author is presenting his own views in the shroud of real research. The opening word is even spelled incorrectly.

I own the 1996 edition, and recommend this book with some reservations. While I learned about a lot of bands I never would have heard of otherwise (draining my bank account as a result), there does seem to be a bias toward newer artists, particularly British (perhaps they could have included Wanda Jackson?). Also, there is a definite tendency toward artists who have yet to prove themselves in the long run (Alanis Morissette???) or artists of questionable merit (Meatloaf?). It is interesting to compare this book to the Trouser Press review guide, as their opinions are sometimes diametrically opposed to each other regarding specific albums.