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Hands-On Network Forensics
Hands-On Network Forensics

Hands-On Network Forensics: Investigate network attacks and find evidence using common network forensic tools

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Hands-On Network Forensics

Introducing Network Forensics

Network forensics is one of the sub-branches of digital forensics where the data being analyzed is the network traffic going to and from the system under observation. The purposes of this type of observation are collecting information, obtaining legal evidence, establishing a root-cause analysis of an event, analyzing malware behavior, and so on. Professionals familiar with digital forensics and incident response (DFIR) know that even the most careful suspects leave traces and artifacts behind. But forensics generally also includes imaging the systems for memory and hard drives, which can be analyzed later. So, how do network forensics come into the picture? Why do we need to perform network forensics at all? Well, the answer to this question is relatively simple.

Let's consider a scenario where you are hunting for some unknown attackers in a...

Technical requirements

To perform the exercises covered in this chapter, you will require the following:

Every investigation requires a precise methodology. We will discuss the popular network forensics methodology used...

Network forensics investigation methodology

To assure accurate and meaningful results at the end of a network forensic exercise, you, as a forensic investigator, must follow a rigid path through a methodological framework. This path is shown in the following diagram:

Obtain, Strategize, Collect, Analyze, and Report (OSCAR) is one such framework that ensures appropriate and constant results. Let's look at each phase from a network forensics point of view:

  • Obtain information: Obtaining information about the incident and the environment is one of the first things to do in a network forensics exercise. The goal of this phase is to familiarize a forensic investigator with the type of incident. The timestamps and timeline of the event, the people, systems, and endpoints involved in the incident—all of these facts are crucial in building up a detailed...

Source of network evidence

Network evidence can be collected from a variety of sources and we will discuss these sources in the next section. The sources that we will be discussing are:

  • Tapping the wire and the air
  • CAM table on a network switch
  • Routing tables on routers
  • Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol logs
  • DNS server logs
  • Domain controller/ authentication servers/ system logs
  • IDS/IPS logs
  • Firewall logs
  • Proxy Server logs

Tapping the wire and the air

One of the purest and most raw forms of information capture is to put taps on network and optical fiber cables to snoop on traffic.

 Many commercial vendors provide network taps and SPAN ports on their devices for snooping...

Wireshark essentials

Readers who are familiar with the basics of Wireshark can skip this section and proceed with the case studies; however, readers who are unfamiliar with the basics or who need to brush up on Wireshark essentials, can feel free to continue through this section. Let's look at some of the most basic features of Wireshark. Look at the following screenshot:

Wireshark

Once we execute Wireshark, we are presented with a screen similar to the preceding picture. On the left-hand side, we have a list of the available interfaces to capture packets from. In the middle, we have recent packet capture files and on the right- hand side, we have online help and user guides. To start a new packet-capture, you can select an interface, such as Ethernet, if you are connected over the wire, or Wi-Fi, if you are connected on a wireless network. Similarly...

Exercise 1 – a noob's keylogger

Consider a scenario where an attacker has planted a keylogger on one of the systems in the network. Your job as an investigator is to find the following pieces of information:

  • Find the infected system
  • Trace the data to the server
  • Find the frequency of the data that is being sent
  • Find what other information is carried besides the keystrokes
  • Try to uncover the attacker
  • Extract and reconstruct the files that have been sent to the attacker

Additionally, in this exercise, you need to assume that the packet capture (PCAP) file is not available and that you have to do the sniffing-out part as well. Let's say that you are connected to a mirror port on the network where you can see all the data traveling to and from the network.

The capture file for this network capture is available at https://github.com/nipunjaswal...

Exercise 2 – two too many

Let's analyze another capture file from https://github.com/nipunjaswal/networkforensics/blob/master/Ch1/Two%20to%20Many/twotomany.pcap, that we currently don't know any details about and try reconstructing the chain of events.

We will open the PCAP in Wireshark, as follows:

From the preceding screenshot, we can see that numerous SYN packets are being sent out to the 64.13.134.52 IP address. However, looking closely, we can see that most of the packets are being sent every so often from a single port, which is 36050 and 36051to almost every port on 64.13.134.52. Yes, you guessed right: this looks like a port scan. Initially the SYN packet is sent out, and on receiving a SYN/ACK, the port is considered open.

We know that the originating IP address, 172.16.0.8is an internal one and the server being contracted...

Summary

Over the course of this chapter, we learned about the basics of network forensics. We used Wireshark to analyze a keylogger and packets from a port scan. We discovered various types of network evidence sources and also learned the basics methodology that we should follow when performing network forensics.

In the next chapter, we will look at the basics of protocols and other technical concepts and strategies that are used to acquire evidence, and we will perform hands-on exercises related to them.

All credits for this above capture file goes to Chris Sanders GitHub repository at https://github.com/chrissanders/packets.

Questions and exercises

To improve your confidence in your network forensics skills, try answering the following questions:

  1. What is the difference between the ftp and ftp-data display filter in Wireshark?
  2. Can you build an http filter for webpages with specific keywords?
  3. We saved files from the PCAP using NetworkMiner. Can you do this using Wireshark? (Yes/No)
  4. Try repeating these exercises with Tshark.

Further reading

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Key benefits

  • Investigate network threats with ease
  • Practice forensics tasks such as intrusion detection, network analysis, and scanning
  • Learn forensics investigation at the network level

Description

Network forensics is a subset of digital forensics that deals with network attacks and their investigation. In the era of network attacks and malware threat, it’s now more important than ever to have skills to investigate network attacks and vulnerabilities. Hands-On Network Forensics starts with the core concepts within network forensics, including coding, networking, forensics tools, and methodologies for forensic investigations. You’ll then explore the tools used for network forensics, followed by understanding how to apply those tools to a PCAP file and write the accompanying report. In addition to this, you will understand how statistical flow analysis, network enumeration, tunneling and encryption, and malware detection can be used to investigate your network. Towards the end of this book, you will discover how network correlation works and how to bring all the information from different types of network devices together. By the end of this book, you will have gained hands-on experience of performing forensics analysis tasks.

Who is this book for?

The book targets incident responders, network engineers, analysts, forensic engineers and network administrators who want to extend their knowledge from the surface to the deep levels of understanding the science behind network protocols, critical indicators in an incident and conducting a forensic search over the wire.

What you will learn

  • Discover and interpret encrypted traffic
  • Learn about various protocols
  • Understand the malware language over wire
  • Gain insights into the most widely used malware
  • Correlate data collected from attacks
  • Develop tools and custom scripts for network forensics automation
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Publication date, Length, Edition, Language, ISBN-13
Publication date : Mar 30, 2019
Length: 358 pages
Edition : 1st
Language : English
ISBN-13 : 9781789344523
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Concepts :
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Estimated delivery fee Deliver to Switzerland

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€11.95

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(Includes tracking information)

Product Details

Publication date : Mar 30, 2019
Length: 358 pages
Edition : 1st
Language : English
ISBN-13 : 9781789344523
Languages :
Concepts :
Tools :

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Table of Contents

15 Chapters
Section 1: Obtaining the Evidence Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Introducing Network Forensics Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Technical Concepts and Acquiring Evidence Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Section 2: The Key Concepts Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Deep Packet Inspection Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Statistical Flow Analysis Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Combatting Tunneling and Encryption Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Section 3: Conducting Network Forensics Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Investigating Good, Known, and Ugly Malware Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Investigating C2 Servers Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Investigating and Analyzing Logs Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
WLAN Forensics Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Automated Evidence Aggregation and Analysis Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Other Books You May Enjoy Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Assessments Chevron down icon Chevron up icon

Customer reviews

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Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Half star icon Empty star icon 3.2
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4 star 16.7%
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Andre Feb 13, 2024
Full star icon Empty star icon Empty star icon Empty star icon Empty star icon 1
Downloading this book triggered my AV. Somebody from Packt should check this out and confirm that they are not distributing Trojans
Subscriber review Packt
Dexter Oct 11, 2023
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Empty star icon Empty star icon 3
Noon keylooger exercise FTP Server is nolonger valid
Subscriber review Packt
Sam Marc Dec 21, 2021
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Good
Amazon Verified review Amazon
Anon Feb 16, 2021
Full star icon Empty star icon Empty star icon Empty star icon Empty star icon 1
This book was a total disappointment. It is a collection of PCAP-based exercises with no real insight. In most cases, you are given a PCAP file containing traces of an attack, and you just examine some fields with Wireshark, and that's it. I didn't learn anything. The chapter on WiFi security was a total waste of time as it didn't contain anything you could find on even a basic student's blog. I would ask the editor to check the quality of the manuscripts they accept for publication, as I'm surprised they allowed a book with such low-quality figures to be sold under their name.
Amazon Verified review Amazon
Dave Oct 22, 2020
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Wow! Into the 'long grass’. Had to do some extra learning to keep up with this how to .
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