Preface

We don't think we need to tell you that writing secure software is incredibly difficult, even for the experts. We're not going to waste any time trying to convince you to start thinking about security—we assume you're already doing that.

Our goal here is to provide you with a rich set of code samples that you can use to help secure the C and C++ programs you write, for both Unix^[1] and Windows environments.

^[1] We know Linux is not a true Unix, but we will lump it in there throughout this book for the sake of convenience.

There are already several other books out there on the topic of writing secure software. Many of them are quite good, but they universally focus on the fundamentals, not code. That is, they cover basic secure programming principles, and they usually explain how to design for security and perform risk assessments. Nevertheless, none of them show you by example how to do such things as SSL-enable your applications properly, which can be surprisingly difficult.

Fundamental software security skills are important, and everybody should master them. But, in this book, we assume that you already have the basics under your belt. We do talk about design considerations, but we do so compactly, focusing instead on getting the implementation details correct. If you need a more in-depth treatment of basic design principles, there are now several good books on this topic, including Building Secure Software (Addison Wesley). In addition, on this book's web site, we provide links to background resources that are available on the Internet.