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

Hash functions and message digests

Message authentication is used for the following purposes:

  • Protecting message integrity: To verify that a message that is sent is not changed during transmission.
  • Verifying message authenticity: To validate the identity of the message originator; that is, to verify who we get the message from.
  • Non-repudiation of its origin: To assure the sender that the message was delivered, and to assure the recipient that it is from the sender. This ensures that neither of them can deny that the message was processed.

A hash function is a mathematical function that accepts a variable-length block of data as input and produces a fixed-size hash value as output. The hash function's calculation result is called a message authentication code (MAC).

Hash functions are used to check data integrity. Some applications of hashes are as follows:

  • In security: To check if the messages or files that have arrived are the same ones that...