Preface

The Database Hacker's Handbook: Defending Database Servers is about database security. This book is intended to provide practical source material for anyone who is attempting to secure database systems in their network or audit a customer's network for database security problems.

Who This Book Is For

This book is aimed at people who are interested in the practical reality of database security. This includes database administrators, network administrators, security auditors , and the broader security research community. The book is unashamedly technical, and the reader is assumed to be familiar with well-known security concepts such as buffer overflows, format string bugs , SQL injection, basic network architecture, and so on. We dip into C, C++, and even assembler source code from time to time, but in general, programming skills aren't necessary in order to understand the material.

Above all, this book is aimed at people who want to ensure that their database systems are as secure as possible.