Network Security Assessment: Know Your Network

I'd recommend this book over Hacking Exposed and other books with the word 'hacking' in the title. The assessment material is comprehensive from both Unix and Windows standpoints, and I certainly picked up a bunch of new tricks that I wasn't aware of before. The book has great coverage of all the latest tools and techniques, but written in a timeless way. At just under 400 pages you'll find that it's not too long either!


Comprehensive is an understatement   May 2, 2004
Thomas Schneider (Aliso Viejo, CA)
8 out of 9 found this review helpful

The author has managed to pack a serious amount of low-level technical information into this book. In the other penetration testing and hacking books I've read, I haven't yet found one to be as comprehensive as Network Security Assessment--to give you an example this book covers IPsec, Citrix and Oracle issues that I have not seen covered elsewhere in print, let alone in the same book. A downside is that the book is hard to read from cover-to-cover, and should be used more as a reference, and the author does assume a level of reader knowledge. I've just finished reading Shellcoder's Handbook too, and found chapter 13 of this book to be a great technical primer for application level issues (such as heap, stack, integer overflows and format string bugs)--the diagrams are excellent and easy for anyone to understand.

All in all this is a very useful book for both the professional security analyst and systems admin with large networks to protect. The Oreilly site has some good info that you should check out, such as the TOC, index and sample chapter on network scanning (http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/networksa/).


Excellent book   July 1, 2004
George Kontostanos (GREECE)
4 out of 4 found this review helpful

This is an excellent written book that I would definitely recommend to anyone interested in Network Security. The author has a very professional approach to security assessment and every chapter covers in detail ways to find out information about systems and their vulnerabilities. The final chapter walks through the process of creating a detailed report about an attack. One of the best security related books I have ever read.


A great collection of assessment tools and techniques   August 31, 2004
F. Loehmann
4 out of 4 found this review helpful


Awareness is a key component in a person's quest for mitigating the inherent risk of operating an IP network attached to the Internet. The book "Network Security Assessment" by Chris McNab, is recommended for anyone who is new to the profession of network perimeter assessment or anyone interested in learning more about how to defend their infrastructure.

The book focuses upon the enumeration and exploitation process of assessing a network perimeter. The author has a great section on manipulating whois, dns and nmap for network enumeration. These sections provide the reader an understanding of the techniques used to determine their networks external façade in a way that is clear and easy to follow yet reiterating the importance of understanding protocols such as ICMP and the advanced usage of information gathering tools like tcpdump.

A large portion of the book show tools, techniques and methodologies used to evaluate and exploit networks and host services. This information is useful and interesting to read; some of the exploits are quite old and could be useful for finding systems that were in dire need of patches. However, the book is about assessing the network not vulnerability re-mediation. The author does have a neat article "Top Ten Tips to Make Attackers' Lives Hell" on O'Reilly's web site. The assessment techniques cover Unix and Windows systems as well as many protocols such as LDAP, SNMP and applications such as IIS and Oracle.

The book ends with a great section on Application-Level risks. This includes useful information on buffer overflows, integer overflows, format string bugs and the like. This is well written and an explanation that is clear.

I feel like this book is a culmination of years of old notebooks, it is a handy resource. Overall, I would definitely recommend this book to anyone new to network security assessment. Even those who have experience in the field will find useful information and techniques in this book. It was a fun book to read and an excellent starting point when looking into the means by which one should assess their network.



a worthy addition to a network security bookshelf   June 22, 2004
Nigel Hedges (Melbourne, Australia)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful

Hello,

I've bought a lot of network security books, as keeping up to date is important in my industry (security analyst). My bookshelf is literally filled with books on this topic which I use both as reference material and/or as a total read from start to finish.

When I saw Network Security Assessment on Amazon, I was immediately attracted to the title, but felt it might be just another unwieldy book with a lot of techniques but little explanation. But I bought it anyway, and since it arrived before Security Warrior did, I started to read it first.

It just goes to show that even when you think you know alot, there's someone out there that has some worthy experience to share. This book shares a wealth of tools, and supplements it with not only examples of how to use those tools, but surrounds the whole use of those tools with a methodology without directly ramming a methodology down your throat.

From the introduction of what tools are required, through to network enumeration, scanning, remote information services (dns, ldap), and right through to specifics of assessing ftp, email, vpn and others...I felt this book was a worthy addition to anyones network security library. It even makes multiple references to materials outside the scope of this book, so if you want to read up more on something else - you've got a great start.

I like books to be simple in their approach, because as we all know network security can be very complex. I think this book achieves this goal, and I recommend it to beginners, intermediates and even some experts who are open to refreshers.