In addition to or perhaps instead of the suggestions I made, go buy The Book of PF and read it from one end to the other. It'll be pf- and OpenBSD-centric, but it'll go over networks of increasing size and complexity very well. (I am reading through it right now)
On Mon, Dec 15, 2014 at 10:05 PM, Justin Sherrill <[email protected]> wrote: > On Mon, Dec 15, 2014 at 9:42 PM, Jeremy <[email protected]> wrote: > >> I want to learn networking & network security. I want to understand how >> people attack systems so that I can mitigate these attacks as much as >> possible. > > It sounds like you're more in need of a general overview so you know > where to go. You could use a specific firewall tool, but you don't > necessarily know enough to judge one over the other. > > Two good people to start with would be Bruce Schneier and Richard Bejtlich: > > https://www.schneier.com/ > > http://taosecurity.blogspot.com/ > > The both have separate books to read, and write prolifically online. > Read through what they talk about, and see where it takes you. > > Past that, if you get to a scenario like "I need to protect a network > site with a fiber link, several outward facing webservers, and a few > internal-only applications, with 50 users", that gives you a target to > work towards. Also workable is "I want to set up a software > router/firewall for my home instead of using a Linksys router or > similar." Think about that part, of what goal you want to set.
