Book Image

Network Protocols for Security Professionals

By : Yoram Orzach, Deepanshu Khanna
5 (1)
Book Image

Network Protocols for Security Professionals

5 (1)
By: Yoram Orzach, Deepanshu Khanna

Overview of this book

With the increased demand for computer systems and the ever-evolving internet, network security now plays an even bigger role in securing IT infrastructures against attacks. Equipped with the knowledge of how to find vulnerabilities and infiltrate organizations through their networks, you’ll be able to think like a hacker and safeguard your organization’s network and networking devices. Network Protocols for Security Professionals will show you how. This comprehensive guide gradually increases in complexity, taking you from the basics to advanced concepts. Starting with the structure of data network protocols, devices, and breaches, you’ll become familiar with attacking tools and scripts that take advantage of these breaches. Once you’ve covered the basics, you’ll learn about attacks that target networks and network devices. Your learning journey will get more exciting as you perform eavesdropping, learn data analysis, and use behavior analysis for network forensics. As you progress, you’ll develop a thorough understanding of network protocols and how to use methods and tools you learned in the previous parts to attack and protect these protocols. By the end of this network security book, you’ll be well versed in network protocol security and security countermeasures to protect network protocols.
Table of Contents (23 chapters)
1
Part 1: Protecting the Network – Technologies, Protocols, Vulnerabilities, and Tools
7
Part 2: Network, Network Devices, and Traffic Analysis-Based Attacks
12
Part 3: Network Protocols – How to Attack and How to Protect

Data network protocols and data structures

A data network's purpose is to forward packets of information from end to end, as fast as possible. Several communication architectures emerged in the 1970s that described the requirements for a communications network. Among them were the OSI-RM from the International Standards Organization (ISO) and TCP/IP from the USA Department of Defense (DoD). While the first one – the OSI-RM – became a theoretical architecture used mostly for training purposes, in the last 25 years or so, the TCP/IP model became the sole architecture used for data networks.

Take a look at these two architectures in the following diagram. Note that, practically, they are relatively similar. While the OSI-RM describes the requirements for a data network in seven layers, the TCP/IP architecture describes it in four. However, the requirements are the same. Let's take a closer look:

Figure 2.1 – The OSI-RM and the TCP...