Las Vegas, Nevada (PRWEB) April 28, 2007 -- SecureMac is pleased to announce the release of MacScan 2.4, the latest update of SecureMac's industry leading anti-spyware package for Macintosh computers.

The SecureMac team is dedicated to providing a secure and dependable product to the Macintosh community. MacScan 2.4 follows this commitment by providing a number of bug fixes and enhancements over MacScan 2.3.1 to the company's flagship security program.

The Macintosh community wanted more time to try MacScan before buying. In response, we've extended the trial period to a full thirty days. Also, in the spirit of Macintosh ease-of-use, Internet file cleaning selections are now saved, and can be easily re-used on future scans.

This version also fixes a number of issues discovered in previous versions, with updates to the removal of Firefox tracking cookies, as well as enhancements to the way MacScan removes tracking cookies from all browsers.

Upgrades from previous versions of MacScan 2 are free, and can be obtained by either selecting "Upgrade MacScan" under the "MacScan" menu, or downloading the demo version from http://macscan.securemac.com and entering your serial number.

April 26, 2007, San Francisco--In network parlance, "Packets" are packages of data that carry information. Capture them with a software tool like Wireshark or Ethereal and you can peer inside them, reassemble them, and use them to really understand network communication from the inside out. But what do you do with those packets once you've collected them? And how can they help you to better understand what's going on under the hood of your network?

Like many No Starch Press readers, publisher Bill Pollock wanted to know what to do with the packets he captured with Wireshark. After a bit of searching he happened upon Chris Sanders' "Packet School 101" on the net and Practical Packet Analysis (No Starch Press, May 2007, http://www.nostarch.com/packet.htm), was the result. Here is a book that shows anyone interested in troubleshooting a network or understanding network communication how to use Wireshark to capture and analyze packets. This is real-world packet analysis and network troubleshooting, the way the pros do it.

"Wireshark is a snap to install and I can point-and-click just as well as the next guy," said Pollock. "But pointing and clicking didn't help me to do anything with the packets I captured. I wanted to get information from those packets. Chris Sanders offers that answer with his Practical Packet Analysis."

Readers of Practical Packet Analysis learn how to:

• Use packet analysis to tackle common network problems, such as loss of connectivity, slow networks, and malware
• Build customized capture and display filters
• Tap into and view live network communication
• Graph traffic patterns to visualize the data flowing across a network
• Use advanced Wireshark features to understand confusing packets

Because net-centric computing requires a deep understanding of network communication at the packet level, Practical Packet Analysis is a must have for any network admininstrator or engineer troubleshooting network problems of any kind.

Table of Contents
Sample Chapter: Chapter 6: Common Protocols

April 11, 2007, San Francisco--For most computer-savvy readers, the word "rootkits" is synonymous with the word "evil." (We all remember the Sony rootkit, right?) Traditionally, rootkits are used to covertly give a remote attacker complete control of a computer, including administrative privileges, while evading detection by hiding running processes and files. Rootkits are a growing threat to even the most secure operating systems.

However, learning how rootkits work can teach us a lot about an operating system. In Designing BSD Rootkits: An Introduction to Kernel Hacking (No Starch Press, April 2007, http://www.nostarch.com/rootkits.htm), author Joseph Kong shows how to write offensive rootkits, defend against malicious ones, and explore the FreeBSD kernel in the process. As the first book to approach rootkits from a FreeBSD-centric perspective, Kong's goal is to make readers smarter, not teach them how to write exploits or launch attacks.

While Designing BSD Rootkits focuses on programming and developing rootkits under FreeBSD, most concepts apply to other operating systems, such as GNU/Linux or Windows. Kong's liberal examples assume no prior kernel-hacking experience. All code is thoroughly described and analyzed, and each chapter contains at least one real-world application.

Read More...
Table of contents: http://www.nostarch.com/rootkits_toc.htm
Sample chapter: http://www.nostarch.com/download/rootkits_ch2.pdf

"The O'Reilly School of Technology bases its courses on the premise that for people to learn any skill they must immerse themselves in the skill and practice. The school employs an online learning technique called "useractive learning" in which the student or "user" is actively engaged in building and creating projects while the instructional material is presented. There are no presentation-heavy videos and simulations to sit through. Instead, the courses feature tutorial-style content and Learning Sandboxes(r) that contain easy-to-use, real, open programming environments in which the students try examples and work on projects."