Part I begins with an overview of security and the fundamentals of Mac OS X security. Chapter 1, “Security Foundations,” covers some basic risks and the user/group model. Chapter 2, “Installation,” highlights the issues surrounding various installations of the operating system, including guides for both the client and server versions of Mac OS X.

Part II focuses on Mac OS X on the workstation. When used as a workstation, Mac OS X has specific security considerations that need to be addressed on a per-user and per-application basis. Chapter 3, “Mac OS X Client General Security Practices,” covers general practices, such as dual booting and patching the operating system. Chapter 4, “What Is This UNIX Thing?,” introduces the UNIX-layer by detailing file permissions and the security risks associated with a UNIX operating system. Many applications that ship with Mac OS X have their own particular security domains. Chapter 5, “User Applications,” covers application-level security, including risks and solutions for securing commonly used applications.

Along with the powerful UNIX underpinnings comes a host of new networking capabilities. These are addressed in Part III. Chapter 6, “Internet Services,” explores the major facets of Mac OS X’s network services, their peculiarities, and how they can be deployed in a secure fashion. Chapter 7, “File Sharing,” deals with issues related to file sharing, including NFS, AFS, SMB, and WebDAV services. Chapter 8, “Network Services,” focuses on the tools and configuration options that can be used to defend a Mac OS X system from network attacks and reduce network vulnerabilities. This includes topics such as VPNs, firewalls, and wireless security.

Part IV of this book addresses Mac OS X security on a larger scale. Apple is positioning Mac OS X Server as the keystone in their enterprise architecture. Maintaining an enterprise full of workstations and servers can be a daunting task. This section covers the security issues that administrators encounter when using Mac OS X Server as the core of their infrastructure. Chapter 9, “Enterprise Host Configuration,” includes Kerberos Integration, Rendezvous, and WebDAV management. Chapter 10, “Directory Services,” explores Mac OS X’s capability to integrate into enterprise directory services. The three directory services covered in this chapter are Active Directory, Open Directory, and NetInfo.

Part V deals primarily with verifying the integrity of a Mac OS X-based infrastructure, and what to do when a system is compromised. No matter how secure a Mac OS X installation is, it may be broken into over time. Without understanding how to audit hosts and respond to attacks, all the previous sections in this book are near useless. Auditing tends to be forgotten in the realm of computer security. Chapter 11, “Auditing,” explains the built in logging facilities of Mac OS X, how to set up logging correctly, and how to monitor logs. Chapter 12, “Forensics,” explores forensic solutions for Mac OS X. This includes host integrity management and post-mortem analysis tools. Finally, Chapter 13, “Incident Response,” covers incident recognition, response, and prevention issues from both a user and an administrative perspective.

For information that did not fit well in any of the chapters, we have provided appendixes: Appendix A, “SUID and SGID Files,” Appendix B, “Common Data Security Architecture,” and Appendix C, “Further Reading.”