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

Layer 2 protocols – STP, VLANs, and security methods

Layer 2 is about connecting between directly attached nodes, and the protocol that implements the frames that carry the upper-layer IP packets is Ethernet. The devices transfer the frames and Layer 2 LAN switches. There are some additional mechanisms to improve, manage, and secure the information, for example, VLANs, port security, and more. Now, let's examine how it all runs together.

The Ethernet protocols

The Ethernet protocol was introduced in the early 1980s and was first standardized as IEEE 802.3 for 10 Mbps Ethernet. Later standards increased the bitrate to 100 Mbps, 1/10 Gbps, 25/40/100 Gbps, and in 2019, they increased to 200/400 Gbps. Additional mechanisms came along with link capacities; those that are related to information security will be discussed in the next sections.

The Ethernet frame structure

Ethernet frames come in three types: Ethernet-2, 802.3 with LLC encapsulation, and 802.3 with...