This book looks at network security in a new and refreshing way. It guides readers
step-by-step through the "stack" ? the seven layers of a network. Each chapter
focuses on one layer of the stack along with the attacks, vulnerabilities, and
exploits that can be found at that layer. The book even includes a chapter on
the mythical eighth layer: The people layer.
This book is designed to
offer readers a deeper understanding of many common vulnerabilities and the ways
in which attackers exploit, manipulate, misuse, and abuse protocols and
applications. The authors guide the readers through this process by using tools
such as Ethereal (sniffer) and Snort (IDS). The sniffer is used to help readers
understand how the protocols should work and what the various attacks are doing
to break them. IDS is used to demonstrate the format of specific signatures and
provide the reader with the skills needed to recognize and detect attacks when
they occur.
What makes this book unique is that it presents the material
in a layer by layer approach which offers the readers a way to learn about
exploits in a manner similar to which they most likely originally learned
networking. This methodology makes this book a useful tool to not only security
professionals but also for networking professionals, application programmers,
and others. All of the primary protocols such as IP, ICMP, TCP are discussed but
each from a security perspective. The authors convey the mindset of the attacker
by examining how seemingly small flaws are often the catalyst of potential
threats. The book considers the general kinds of things that may be monitored
that would have alerted users of an attack.
