Network Security Assessment ― Know Your Network

How secure is your network? The best way to find out is to attack it. Network Security Assessment provides you with the tricks and tools professional security analysts and consultants use to identify and assess risks in internet-based networks—the same penetration testing model they use to secure government, military, and commercial networks. With this book, you can adopt, refine, and reuse this testing model to design and deploy networks that are hardened and immune from attack.

This book demonstrates how a determined attacker scours internet-based networks in search of vulnerable components, from the network to the application level. This third edition is up-to-date on the latest hacking techniques, but rather than focus on individual issues, it looks at the bigger picture by grouping and analyzing threats at a high-level. By grouping threats in this way, you learn to create proactive defensive strategies against entire attack categories, providing protection now and into the future.

This book includes:

• The latest hacking tools, techniques, and defense strategies
• Relevant background information regarding stack overflows, heap corruption, format string bugs, and more
• Testing approaches based on standards recognized by the US and UK governments
• An author who works as a technical director for a security firm that consults Merrill Lynch, American Express and other high-profile clients

Chris McNab is the technical director of Matta, a vendor-independent security consulting outfit based in the United Kingdom. Since 2000, Chris has presented and run applied hacking courses across Europe, training a large number of financial, retail, and government clients in practical attack and penetration techniques, so that they can assess and protect their own networks effectively.

Chris speaks at a number of security conferences and seminars, and is routinely called to comment on security events and other breaking news. He has appeared on television and radio stations in the UK (including BBC 1 and Radio 4), and in a number of publications and computing magazines.

Responsible for the provision of security assessment services at Matta, Chris and his team undertake Internet-based, internal, application, and wireless security assessment work, providing clients with practical and sound technical advice relating to secure network design and hardening strategies. Chris boasts a 100% success rate when compromising the networks of multinational corporations and financial services companies over the last five years.