Customer Reviews

Hacker's Challenge 3: 20 Brand New Forensic Scenarios & Solutions (Hacking Exposed) (v. 3)

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I've been looking for a resource that would be useful as a recommendation to the students in my wireless training classes. There've been plenty teaching wireless security and penetration philosophically, but I wanted a practical - get your hands dirty - approach. It's here! Hackers Challenge 3 contains a great "case study" of a hack attack on a wireless network and gives you the insights you need to analyze such an attack.

In addition, you get information related to other newer attacks like phishing, VoIP vulnerabilities and social engineering. This is a great book and MUST be in every security technician's library.

Tom Carpenter, Author: Wireless@ Certification Official Study Guide, CWSP Certification Official Study Guide, and Foundations of Effectiveness.

What struck me about this book is that the attacks are all brand new. This isn't just a rehash of the same old attacks we read about over and over again, nor is it a rehash of the attacks - but on steroids - from the previous Hacker's Challenge books. The day of the simple port scan and null session enumeration are long gone. Today's world is much more complicated and scarier. Hacker's Challenge 3 proves it.

And these aren't off-the-wall attacks cooked up in hidden computer labs by researchers. They're the type of threats now, unfortunately, becoming more commonplace to any one in information security.

The chapters on phishing are real-life and could've been taken right out of the playbook of an actual attack perpetrated against a real bank. The steps for investigating, tracking down and bringing down malicious phishing sites closely follow those actually taken by information security professionals on the job.

Another attack presented is pharming, a new and frightening type of DNS poisoning that threatens financial and e-commerce web sites. The description of the attacks is very accurate. It's almost as if you were working with the team trying to block the attack.

Hacker's Challenge 3 is written by a star-studded cast of well-known industry players, each a top notch expert in their specialty in the field.

For each attack, this book provides a complete set of steps for detection, resolution, prevention and evasion of future attacks. There are detailed examples of the forensics examination used to track down both the attack and its offending attackers, including samples of analyzed logs and data that would be used by an actual threat and incident management team in action on a case.

Each chapter has a series of questions that add to the material and provide thought-provoking points for further discussion.

This is a digest of the new world of Twenty-First Century attacks that should be read by every information security professional.

What I like about this book is that the technical information is at a level where amateurs will not be overwhelmed while seasoned pros will not be bored.

The format is also very nice because you become involved in the solution rather than just having technical information thrown at you.

Finally, and most important to me, the solutions to the challenges are technically correct.

The book is certainly a good read.

This book surpassed my expectations. I expected a high-level, tech-jargon-filled, 'computer-geek' book with no link to the mentality of a novice user like myself. Instead, I found that it actually IS all of those things, but blends it very nicely with an engaging set of real-life stories.

The attention to the details of the lives and experiences of each individual in the stories gives an added flavor not seen in most computer books. I would expect anyone to be able to relate to these stories, and the experiences they depict.

It also reveals how ignorant most people are to the real dangers of insecure networks and PCs, and it's an applaudable attempt to reach those people. Well done!

One of the best ways to teach is via the use of examples. This book is chock full of real world forensic scenarios along with their solutions. As the author of a forensics book myself, I understand and appreciate the hard work that these four brilliant individuals have put into this excellent text. We need to see more books like this in the future!

This is a book that can serve two different purposes. For the security expert the book provides 20 real world security issues along with the appropriate logs and challenges them to work out what type of attack is being performed, how it is being performed, and what needs to be done to fix it and prevent it happening again. For those with an interest in security but who are not experts the book provides an entertaining series of tutorials that introduce several types of security breach, what they are, how to detect them, and what to do to stop them or at leasdt mitigate the effects.

The 'challenges' that are described in the book cover a range of different methods that have been used to breach the security of various computer networks. Each challenge provides a all of the essential pieces of information that would be available to be examined by security experts dealing with the problem (trimmed of much of the irrelevant logs). Sufficient information is actually provided to enable someone with a sufficient knowledge of security to work out both what type of attack has taken place and how the attack was done. They should then have no trouble in answering the series of questions about the particular attack that appear at the end of each challenge before turning to the solutions section to check their answers.

The challenges also provide excellent tutorials for novice security staff to find out how to extract and interpret information in order to determine what has happened.

I always thought of computer security as a necessary but boring subject but the authors of this book have managed to make it both informative and entertaining. If you are a security specialist looking to take the "hacker's Challenge" and test how much you know or if you are just someone wanting to learn more about some of the latest security threats then this book will provide you with many hours of interesting reading and investigating.

I read and reviewed HC1 in Nov 01, and HC2 in Jan 03. Now in Aug 06, I'm happy to be reading Hacker's Challenge 3 (HC3). Like its predecessors, HC3 is the sort of book that needs to be used when interviewing new hires or promoting technical staff. If the candidate has read the book and knows the answers to the challenges, she at least demonstrates her commitment to learning, as well as an ability to remember what she reads. If she can solve the challenges without having read the book, she shows a higher level of skill. If she has no clue how to respond to the challenges, you can move on to the next candidate.

The 20 challenges cover the following: phishing, DNS cache poisoning, Web app hacking (multiple), anonymous FTP abuse, wireless misconfigurations and abuse, social engineering, disgruntled soon-to-be-ex-employees, malware, password reuse, p2p abuse, router exploitation, XSS, and an iSCSI compromise. The last of these was my favorite because I have not seen this in the field yet. Almost all of the other exploits will seem familiar to anyone performing security consulting.

I believe all of the HC books are wonderful learning and discussion tools for junior security analysts. I would caution them to not accept the "approved solutions" as the proper way to conduct incident response and forensics, however. In 4 or perhaps 5 of the 20 cases, the IR process commenced with direct examination of suspected systems. In other words, admins or security folks jumped right onto possibly compromised hosts and began searching for clues of intrusion.

This is not the proper way to perform IR, yet I saw it demonstrated in Chs 4, 6, 9, and 12. Ch 12, p 119 was especially disappointing -- "the obvious place to begin the investigation is the Oracle server." Wrong -- unless you want to contaminate evidence, tip off the intruder, or introduce other problems into the security equation.

One of Anton Chuvakin's cases demonstrated a better way to approach the IR problem -- look for application logs, firewall records, and network traces first. Avoid touching suspected victims until there is no other option, and then do so carefully.

I do not intend to say through my comments that this process was universally ignored in HC3. Several times proper host-based IR procedures are followed, when using forensic live CDs or obtaining hard drive images. However, please keep my comments in mind while reading HC3. Since the book claims to be based on real events, it's possible the authors are retelling flawed investigations by their customers!

Overall, I definitely recommend reading HC3 if you are new to security or if you need to quiz your newer employees. The book is technically sound (except for a mention of Windows 2002 on p 265) and entertaining. Kudos for the HC3 team for sharing their creative ideas with us.

I bought the entire series of these books to help my organization during Incident Response exercises. As part of our yearly audits we are required to test our procedures and tighten up any loose ends. I felt a great way to test them was with predefined scenarios such as the ones in this book. We had to modify them a little to meet our infrastructure and business model, but that was not too difficult. It was amazing to work through these scenarios as a group and see how each of us would handle the situations differently. Overall it was a very effective way to share ideas and thoughts on how we would handle these situations in the future.

Overall I think the book was an enjoyable and thought provoking read, and can be used for real world situations. Perfect for getting your security team thinking about what might hit them next and how they will handle situations when they arise.

The stories were entertaining but they lacked the detail I had been looking for. It would be a great book for non-technical managers to read so they know their techs are not just over-bearing security freaks.

I also feel that several of the investigations were flawed in how they were conducted. It is possible that the book is just being faithful to the 'real' story, but it would have been good to see comments on what could have been done better at the end of each one.

If you are looking for a broad picture of the types of attacks you might face and some procedures for what to do during or after an attack the book can be a helpful starting point (wake up call for some).

HACKER'S CHALLENGE 3: 20 BRAND-NEW FORENSIC SCENARIOS AND SOLUTIONS comes from too-tier security experts who offer 20 new real-world network security incidents to allow readers to test computer forensics skills and responses. From phishing and internal corporate hacking to wireless and Linux hacks, each challenge includes an in-depth explanation of the incident, how it was detected, and provides technical logs and network maps: everything needed for readers to test their skills at solving the incident. And yes, detailed analysis of successful results appear at the end.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch