Re: Learning Network Security Basics

[Adam Jones <ajones1 () gmail com>]

A lot of people have suggested learning about security now instead of
waiting until you finish some network courses. I think this is a good
recommendation as it will force you to learn networking well just to
be able to understand some of the concepts, which gives the double
bonus of making you study for your current classes also. Just
understand that you may not be able to understand everything on the
first pass.

Someone earlier suggested the sans reading room. There is a ton of
information in there, and a lot of the older stuff is either still
entirely valid or the concepts from it can still apply. Again reailize
that without a decent background in the systems involved in a given
paper (networking, operating systems, programming, etc) you may have a
hard time with it.

I would also suggest avoiding the "hacking exposed" series of books
for quite a while. Not that they are necessarily bad books, but the
information they cover is filled with references to different tools
you can use. I think it is better to learn the concepts involved then
review the available tools to help understand what is going on.