Hack the Stack: The 8 Layers of an Insecure
Network (Paperback)
Book Description
"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 attacker's 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 protocol 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." |