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Practical Network Scanning
Practical Network Scanning

Practical Network Scanning: Capture network vulnerabilities using standard tools such as Nmap and Nessus

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Profile Icon Singh Chauhan
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Paperback May 2018 326 pages 1st Edition
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Profile Icon Singh Chauhan
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€32.99
Paperback May 2018 326 pages 1st Edition
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Practical Network Scanning

Secure Network Design

In the previous chapter you learned about the basic concept of infrastructure security and built a strong foundation for the different areas required to understand the need for information security based on current security threats that exist in cyber space.

The internet has grown dramatically and has reached a stage where everyone must be connected in order to exchange information. Imagine that billions of people with internet enabled devices are directly connected to the internet, and some sort of unsecured network becomes a target for cyber criminals.

In this chapter, we describe how to secure a network and look at the significance of network security. In a layered fashion, we will also discuss methods and approaches to building a secure network based on business aims.

The following topics will be covered in this chapter:

  • Access control
  • Network management...

Access control 

As an application or network owner, we should know who or what is accessing our network resources. If we do not know or do not keep track of our activity and instead just assume what is happening on the network, we cannot guarantee data security and the safety of end-users.

We need to start with the basics of security. This begins with understanding what's on our network.

Asset classification and physical security

The most basic (but often most overlooked) element of network security involves keeping hardware protected from theft or physical intrusion.

As mentioned earlier, the first thing we need to classify is our assets. Once data classification is identified, network servers, network switches...

Network management and security design

For managing network and networking assets, there must always be a centralized secure management utility subnet for services such as DNS, DHCP, NTP, AAA, and network management. By defining boundaries, it becomes much easier to troubleshoot problems with the services when they are in known locations with a few well-known access paths and methods.

Network segmentation

Most of us focus on front door security and threats coming from the outside world by putting some sort of firewall on the perimeter. In reality, relying upon perimeter security alone does not protect your network and information data. Doing this is like putting money into a bank which depends on one armed guard.

The concept...

Hardening your TCP/IP stack

For any given operating system, tuning of the TCP/IP stack can be performed by the system administrator. Changing the default values of TCP/IP stack variables provides another layer of protection and helps you to secure your hosts in a better way.

This is all about determining and making decisions about how many connections the server can maintain in a half-open state before TCP/IP triggers SYN flooding attack protection. This simply means that to configure the threshold value of the TCP connection, requests must be exceeded before SYN flood protection is triggered.

The following parameters can be adjusted on an operating system level to tune TCP/IP stacks. These are not only applicable to the operating system, but also to network devices such as firewalls and load balancers, which allow you to fine tune TCP stacks:

  • TcpMaxHalfOpen
  • TcpMaxHalfOpenRetried...

DoS and DDoS attacks 

A Denial-of-Service is an attack in which online services do not respond to connections from legitimate hosts due to their resources being overused by malicious requests. This attack becomes a Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attack when it comes from multiple sources and it becomes difficult to block the source with IP or Geo-location.

DDoS attacks usually take the form of the following:

  • Volume-based attacks
  • Application layer attacks
  • Low-rate attacks

Volume-based attacks

Volume based attacks are by far the most common type of DDoS attacks.

According to Arbor Networks, 65% of DDoS attacks are volumetric in nature.

Volume-based attacks are characterized by an excessive amount of traffic...

IP spoofing

IP spoofing is the creation of IP packets using somebody else's IP address as the source address of an IP packet.

Let's take a look at IP headers in an IP packet:

In the following diagram, the attackers represent someone else's IP address:

Anti-spoofing using access lists

A network operator can implement an anti-spoofing access-list filter to prevent packets with incorrect source IP addresses from entering and leaving the network. With the following command, the access list will prevent incoming packets that have the internal IP address from coming in. 220.x.x.x is a network which I own, so I do not expect to encounter any packets coming from outside my own IP address.

Cisco IOS command:

access...

Ping sweeps and Port scans

Let's try to understand ping before we discuss ping sweep.

  • Ping: Ping is a tool commonly used to find the status of a host on a network. Ping is based on the ICMP protocol. When a Ping process request is sent out as an ICMP echo to the target host, it replies with an ICMP echo reply.
  • Ping Sweep: Ping sweep is a technique that can be used to find out which hosts are alive in a network for a defined IP range. Network admins who allow ICMP are vulnerable to ICMP based attacks.

Multiple tools are available for ping sweeps. You can even develop your own tool with a small script. Here is a simple example of how to run a ping sweep from a Windows machine: FOR /L loop, which is a counter, the variable is %i. It starts at 1 and increases by 1 with each iteration through the loop, going up to 255. I want to ping through a ...

DNS vulnerabilities 

DNS continues to be a very attractive target for hackers and a very important piece of network from a user's point of view. We use it seamlessly almost every time we hit a web page or application throughout a day, without even knowing that it exists.

DNS provides a way to resolve the IP address of any host on the internet with directory services.

How does DNS work?

A host sends a DNS query request to a DNS server and, in response, gets the IP address 1.1.1.1 for  www.abc.com. The host can now make a direct request to www.abc.com using  the IP address: 

DNS protocol attacks

...

Access control 


As an application or network owner, we should know who or what is accessing our network resources. If we do not know or do not keep track of our activity and instead just assume what is happening on the network, we cannot guarantee data security and the safety of end-users.

We need to start with the basics of security. This begins with understanding what's on our network.

Asset classification and physical security

The most basic (but often most overlooked) element of network security involves keeping hardware protected from theft or physical intrusion.

As mentioned earlier, the first thing we need to classify is our assets. Once data classification is identified, network servers, network switches and other core network components should be protected in well-guarded facilities. Cages and racks should be locked and permission should be granted based on requirements with proper approval and proper security guidelines.

Authentication, authorization, and accounting

Authentication, authorization...

Network management and security design


For managing network and networking assets, there must always be a centralized secure management utility subnet for services such as DNS, DHCP, NTP, AAA, and network management. By defining boundaries, it becomes much easier to troubleshoot problems with the services when they are in known locations with a few well-known access paths and methods.

Network segmentation

Most of us focus on front door security and threats coming from the outside world by putting some sort of firewall on the perimeter. In reality, relying upon perimeter security alone does not protect your network and information data. Doing this is like putting money into a bank which depends on one armed guard.

The concept of segmentation is based on ancient history, when Roman empires formed and fought units based on the ethnic and geographic identity of captured warriors. The idea was very simple: groups of warriors were formed on the basis of their similar backgrounds so that they could...

Hardening your TCP/IP stack


For any given operating system, tuning of the TCP/IP stack can be performed by the system administrator. Changing the default values of TCP/IP stack variables provides another layer of protection and helps you to secure your hosts in a better way.

This is all about determining and making decisions about how many connections the server can maintain in a half-open state before TCP/IP triggers SYN flooding attack protection. This simply means that to configure the threshold value of the TCP connection, requests must be exceeded before SYN flood protection is triggered.

The following parameters can be adjusted on an operating system level to tune TCP/IP stacks. These are not only applicable to the operating system, but also to network devices such as firewalls and load balancers, which allow you to fine tune TCP stacks:

  • TcpMaxHalfOpen
  • TcpMaxHalfOpenRetried
  • TcpMaxPortsExhausted
  • TcpMaxConnectResponseRetransmissions

We will discuss DoS attacks in detail in the next section...

DoS and DDoS attacks 


A Denial-of-Service is an attack in which online services do not respond to connections from legitimate hosts due to their resources being overused by malicious requests. This attack becomes a Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attack when it comes from multiple sources and it becomes difficult to block the source with IP or Geo-location.

DDoS attacks usually take the form of the following:

  • Volume-based attacks
  • Application layer attacks
  • Low-rate attacks

Volume-based attacks

Volume based attacks are by far the most common type of DDoS attacks.

Note

According to Arbor Networks, 65% of DDoS attacks are volumetric in nature.

Volume-based attacks are characterized by an excessive amount of traffic (sometimes in excess of 100 Gbps). They do not mandate large amounts of traffic to be generated by one location or one source.

The following is an example of such an attack:

  • NTP Amplification: The NTP amplification attack is a volume based DDoS attack in which an attacker exploits the publicly...
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Key benefits

  • Learn to choose the best network scanning toolset for your system
  • Implement different concepts of network scanning such as port scanning and OS detection
  • Adapt a practical approach to securing your network

Description

Network scanning is the process of assessing a network to identify an active host network; same methods can be used by an attacker or network administrator for security assessment. This procedure plays a vital role in risk assessment programs or while preparing a security plan for your organization. Practical Network Scanning starts with the concept of network scanning and how organizations can benefit from it. Then, going forward, we delve into the different scanning steps, such as service detection, firewall detection, TCP/IP port detection, and OS detection. We also implement these concepts using a few of the most prominent tools on the market, such as Nessus and Nmap. In the concluding chapters, we prepare a complete vulnerability assessment plan for your organization. By the end of this book, you will have hands-on experience in performing network scanning using different tools and in choosing the best tools for your system.

Who is this book for?

If you are a security professional who is responsible for securing an organization's infrastructure, then this book is for you.

What you will learn

  • Achieve an effective security posture to design security architectures
  • Learn vital security aspects before moving to the Cloud
  • Launch secure applications with Web Application Security and SQL Injection
  • Explore the basics of threat detection/response/ mitigation with important use cases
  • Learn all about integration principles for PKI and tips to secure it
  • Design a WAN infrastructure and ensure security over a public WAN
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Product Details

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Publication date : May 24, 2018
Length: 326 pages
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Language : English
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Table of Contents

14 Chapters
Fundamental Security Concepts Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Secure Network Design Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Server-Level Security Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Cloud Security Design Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Application Security Design Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Threat Detection and Response Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Vulnerability Assessment Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Remote OS Detection Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Public Key Infrastructure-SSL Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Firewall Placement and Detection Techniques Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
VPN and WAN Encryption Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Summary and Scope of Security Technologies Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Assessment Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Other Books you may enjoy Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
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