blog/content/reviews/books/silence-on-the-wire-a-field-guide-to-passive-reconnaissance-and-indirect-attacks.md

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title = "Silence on the Wire: A Field Guide to Passive Reconnaissance and Indirect Attacks - Michal Zalewski"
date = 2016-06-23

[taxonomies]
tags = ["books", "michal zalewski", "reviews", "it"]
+++

[GoodReads Summary](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/82994.Silence_on_the_Wire):
There are many ways that a potential attacker can intercept information, or
learn more about the sender, as the information travels over a network.
Silence on the Wire uncovers these silent attacks so that system
administrators can defend against them, as well as better understand and
monitor their systems.

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{{ stars(stars=2) }}

This is a book about passive detection. Or active detection. Or attacks. I
really don't know, because the subject keeps jumping around so much you have
no idea the point the author wants to make.

There are plenty explanations for stuff, but mostly is dumbed down to the
point it doesn't even make sense. Besides that, you have explanations for
attacks that sounds really scary/cool (depending on your point of view) but
after you think a bit about it, it is really hard to execute and, with the
necessary access to do so, you wouldn't really need this kind of stuff.

Also, there is plenty of "this author research" or "a research that yours
truly did" that sounds more like "Hey, look how awesome I am" than "you should
really worry about this thing".

About the edition, there are original articles in their original form, but
they are presented in mono spaced font in a weird indentation that doesn't fit
any layout you chose (landscape, two columns landscape, portrait). Also, there
are chapter footnotes and book footnotes and both follow the same format,
which means you will find a "[1]", followed by a "[100]", followed by a "[2]".
And the author uses "Too," instead of "Also," which, for a non-native English
speaking person like me, sounds strange as hell.