Preface

...All samurai ought certainly apply themselves to the study of military science. But a bad use can be made of this study to puff oneself up and disparage one's colleagues by a lot of high-flown but incorrect arguments that only mislead the young and spoil their spirit. For this kind gives forth a wordy discourse that may appear to be correct and proper enough, but actually he is striving for effect and thinking only of his own advantage, so the result is the deterioration of his character and the loss of the real samurai spirit. This is a fault arising from a superficial study of the subject, so those who begin it should never be satisfied to go only halfway but persevere until they understand all the secrets and only then return to their former simplicity and live a quiet life....

”Daidoji Yuzan, The Code of the Samurai ^[1]

^[1] Samurai quote courtesy of http://www.samurai-archives.com.

This book offers unique methods for honing your information security (infosec) technique. The typical reader is an intermediate- to advanced-level practitioner. But who among us is typical? Each of us approaches infosec with distinctive training and skill. Still, before you spend your hard-earned money on this book, we will try to describe the target reader.

As an example, you might enjoy this book if you already have experience with networking and are able to program in one or more languages. Although your interest in infosec might be new, you have already read at least a few technical books on the subject, such as Practical UNIX & Internet Security from O'Reilly. You found those books to be informative, and you would like to read more of the same, but hopefully covering newer topics and at a more advanced level. Rather than an introductory survey of security from the defensive side, you would like to see through an attacker's eyes.

You are already familiar with basic network attacks such as sniffing, spoofing, and denial-of-service. You read security articles and vulnerability mailing lists online, and you know this is the best way to broaden your education. However, you now want a single volume that can quickly ratchet your knowledge level upward by a few notches.

Instead of reading a simple catalog of software tools, you would like to delve deeper into underlying concepts such as packet fragmentation, overflow attacks, and operating system fingerprinting. You likewise want more on forensics, honeypots, and the psychological basis of social engineering. You also enjoy novel challenges such as implementing Bayesian intrusion detection and defending against wireless " airborne " viruses. Before buying into Microsoft's Trustworthy Computing initiative, you would like to delve deeper into Windows XP attacks and Windows Server weaknesses.

These are some of the topics we cover. Although some parts will necessarily be review for more advanced users, we also cover unique topics that might gratify even seasoned veterans . To give one example, we cover reverse code engineering (RCE), including the esoteric subjects of Linux and embedded RCE. RCE is indispensable for dissecting malicious code, unveiling corporate spyware, and extracting application vulnerabilities, but until this book it has received sparse coverage in the printed literature.

This book is not married to a particular operating system, since many of you are responsible for protecting mixed networks. We have chosen to focus on security from the attacking side, rather than from the defending side. A good way to build an effective defense is to understand and anticipate potential attacks.

Throughout the text we have tried to avoid giving our personal opinions too often. However, to some extent we must, or this would be nothing more than a dry catalog of facts. We ask your forgiveness for editorializing, and we make no claim that our opinions are authoritative , or even correct. Human opinion is diverse and inherently flawed. At the very least, we hope to provide a counterpoint to your own views on a controversial subject. We also provide many anecdotal examples to help enliven some of the heavier subjects.

We have made a special effort to provide you with helpful references at the end of each chapter. These references allow us to credit some of the classic infosec sources and allow you to further explore the areas that interest you the most. This is by no means a comprehensive introduction to network security. Rather, it is a guide for rapidly advancing your skill in several key areas. We hope you enjoy reading it as much as we enjoyed writing it.