Foundations of Blockchain. The pathway to cryptocurrencies and decentralized blockchain applications

Koshik Raj

Blockchain technology is a combination of three popular concepts: cryptography, peer-to-peer networking, and game theory. This book is for anyone who wants to dive into blockchain from first principles and learn how decentralized applications and cryptocurrencies really work.This book begins with an overview of blockchain technology, including key definitions, its purposes and characteristics, so you can assess the full potential of blockchain. All essential aspects of cryptography are then presented, as the backbone of blockchain. For readers who want to study the underlying algorithms of blockchain, you’ll see Python implementations throughout.You’ll then learn how blockchain architecture can create decentralized applications. You’ll see how blockchain achieves decentralization through peer-to-peer networking, and how a simple blockchain can be built in a P2P network. You’ll learn how these elements can implement a cryptocurrency such as Bitcoin, and the wider applications of blockchain work through smart contracts. Blockchain optimization techniques, and blockchain security strategies are then presented. To complete this foundation, we consider blockchain applications in the financial and non-financial sectors, and also analyze the future of blockchain. A study of blockchain use cases includes supply chains, payment systems, crowdfunding, and DAOs, which rounds out your foundation in blockchain technology.

GeoServer Beginner's Guide. Share geospatial data using Open Source standards - Second Edition

Stefano Iacovella

GeoServer is an opensource server writtenin Java that allows users to share, process,and edit geospatial data. This book willguide you through the new featuresand improvements of GeoServer and willhelp you get started with it. GeoServerBeginner's Guide gives you the impetus tobuild custom maps using your data withoutthe need for costly commercial softwarelicenses and restrictions. Even if you donot have prior GIS knowledge, you will beable to make interactive maps after readingthis book.You will install GeoServer, access your datafrom a database, and apply style points,lines, polygons, and labels to impress sitevisitors with real-time maps. Then youfollow a step-by-step guide that installsGeoServer in minutes. You will explorethe web-based administrative interfaceto connect to backend data stores suchas PostGIS, and Oracle. Going ahead, youcan display your data on web-basedinteractive maps, use style lines, points,polygons, and embed images to visualizethis data for your web visitors. You willwalk away from this book with a workingapplication ready for production.After reading GeoServer Beginner's Guide,you will be able to build beautiful custommaps on your website using your geospatialdata.

Getting Started with FortiGate. This book will take you from complete novice to expert user in simple, progressive steps. It covers all the concepts you need to administer a FortiGate unit with lots of examples and clear explanations

Fabrizio Volpe, Rosato Fabbri

FortiGate from Fortinet is a highly successful family of appliances enabled to manage routing and security on different layers, supporting dynamic protocols, IPSEC and VPN with SSL, application and user control, web contents and mail scanning, endpoint checks, and more, all in a single platform. The heart of the appliance is the FortiOS (FortiOS 5 is the latest release) which is able to unify a friendly web interface with a powerful command line to deliver high performance. FortiGate is able to give users the results they usually achieve at a fraction of the cost of what they would have to invest with other vendors.This practical, hands-on guide addresses all the tasks required to configure and manage a FortiGate unit in a logical order. The book starts with topics related to VLAN and routing (static and advanced) and then discusses in full the UTM features integrated in the appliance. The text explains SSL VPN and IPSEC VPN with all the required steps you need to deploy the aforementioned solutions. High availability and troubleshooting techniques are also explained in the last two chapters of the book.This concise, example-oriented book explores all the concepts you need to administer a FortiGate unit. You will begin by covering the basic tools required to administer a FortiGate unit, including NAT, routing, and VLANs. You will then be guided through the concepts of firewalling, UTM inside the appliance, tunnelling using SSL, and IPSEC and dial-up configurations. Next, you will get acquainted with important topics like high availability and Vdoms. Finally, you will end the book with an overview of troubleshooting tools and techniques.

Getting Started with Web Components. Build modular and reusable components using HTML, CSS and JavaScript

Prateek Jadhwani

Web Components are a set of APIs that help you build reusable UI modules that can operate in any modern browser using just Vanilla JavaScript. The power of Web Components lies in their ability to build frontend web applications with or without web frameworks.With this practical guide, you will understand how Web Components can help you build reusable UI components for your modern web apps. The book starts by explaining the fundamentals of Web Components' design and strategies for using them in your existing frontend web projects. You will also learn how to use JavaScript libraries such as Polymer.js and Stencil.js for building practical components. As you progress, you will build a single-page application using only Web Components to fully realize their potential. This practical guide demonstrates how to work with Shadow DOM and custom elements to build the standard components of a web application. Toward the end of the book, you will learn how to integrate Web Components with standard web frameworks to help you manage large-scale web applications.By the end of this book, you will have learned about the capabilities of Web Components in building custom elements and have the necessary skills for building a reusable UI for your web applications.

Getting Started with Windows Server Security. Develop and implement a secure Microsoft infrastructure platform using native and built-in tools

SURI PULLEMLA, Santhosh Sivarajan

Ghidra Software Reverse Engineering for Beginners. Analyze, identify, and avoid malicious code and potential threats in your networks and systems

A. P. David

Ghidra, an open source software reverse engineering (SRE) framework created by the NSA research directorate, enables users to analyze compiled code on any platform, whether Linux, Windows, or macOS. This book is a starting point for developers interested in leveraging Ghidra to create patches and extend tool capabilities to meet their cybersecurity needs.You'll begin by installing Ghidra and exploring its features, and gradually learn how to automate reverse engineering tasks using Ghidra plug-ins. You’ll then see how to set up an environment to perform malware analysis using Ghidra and how to use it in the headless mode. As you progress, you’ll use Ghidra scripting to automate the task of identifying vulnerabilities in executable binaries. The book also covers advanced topics such as developing Ghidra plug-ins, developing your own GUI, incorporating new process architectures if needed, and contributing to the Ghidra project.By the end of this Ghidra book, you’ll have developed the skills you need to harness the power of Ghidra for analyzing and avoiding potential vulnerabilities in code and networks.

Git Essentials. Create, merge, and distribute code with Git, the most powerful and flexible versioning system available - Second Edition

Ferdinando Santacroce

Since its inception, Git has attracted skilled developers due to its robust, powerful, and reliable features. Its incredibly fast branching ability transformed a piece of code from a niche tool for Linux Kernel developers into a mainstream distributed versioning system. Like most powerful tools, Git can be hard to approach since it has a lot of commands, subcommands, and options that easily confuse newcomers.The 2nd edition of this very successful book will help you overcome this fear and become adept in all the basic tasks in Git. Building upon the success of the first book, we start with a brief step-by-step installation guide; after this, you'll delve into the essentials of Git. For those of you who have bought the first edition, this time we go into internals in far greater depth, talking less about theory and using much more practical examples.The book serves as a primer for topics to follow, such as branching and merging, creating and managing a GitHub personal repository, and fork and pull requests. You’ll then learn the art of cherry-picking, taking only the commits you want, followed by Git blame. Finally, we'll see how to interoperate with a Subversion server, covering the concepts and commands needed to convert an SVN repository into a Git repository.To conclude, this is a collection of resources, links, and appendices to satisfy even the most curious.

Go Systems Programming. Master Linux and Unix system level programming with Go

Mihalis Tsoukalos

Go is the new systems programming language for Linux and Unix systems. It is also the language in which some of the most prominent cloud-level systems have been written, such as Docker. Where C programmers used to rule, Go programmers are in demand to write highly optimized systems programming code.Created by some of the original designers of C and Unix, Go expands the systems programmers toolkit and adds a mature, clear programming language. Traditional system applications become easier to write since pointers are not relevant and garbage collection has taken away the most problematic area for low-level systems code: memory management.This book opens up the world of high-performance Unix system applications to the beginning Go programmer. It does not get stuck on single systems or even system types, but tries to expand the original teachings from Unix system level programming to all types of servers, the cloud, and the web.