Customer Reviews

Know Your Enemy: Revealing the Security Tools, Tactics, and Motives of the Blackhat Community

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I am a senior engineer for network security operations. I reviewed and provided feedback on a draft of "Know Your Enemy" (KYE) and I am credited on page xiii. This book by the Honeynet Project breaks new ground in the security and publishing communities. It is the first substantial "intelligence report" on those who use the Internet for destructive means, and will enlighten readers of all skill and experience levels.

As a former Air Force intelligence officer, I share the Honeynet Project's desire to gain insight into the tools, tactics, and intentions of the enemy. After explaining the technical details of configuring the honeynet, the authors discuss the attacks launched against their monitored network. The book's level of detail is excellent, as it includes network traces, log entries, and even keystroke captures. This multi-dimensional analysis is exactly the sort of information needed by intrusion detectors and other security personnel.

Beyond the descriptions of various incidents, the authors reveal several key insights. First, the security community must look beyond the tools used by the adversary, and understand tactics and intentions. Second, data collection is critical; alerts mean little without supporting evidence. Third, defense in depth applies to intrusion detection, as it is best to use logs from routers, firewalls, IDS, and hosts together when analyzing events.

The main reason I gave the book four stars was the inclusion of 100 pages of IRC logs in chapter 11. This did not add much to the 328 page book. The analysis of the chat sessions near the end of the chapter was more helpful. That section could have paraphrased the chatting or made reference to transcripts on a CD-ROM. I also hope future Honeynet Project books address Windows NT/2000 compromises, and ways to perform digital forensics on those systems.

Overall, I found "Know Your Enemy" to be highly motivational. I was glad to finally see proof that the "good guys" share information! (I think we give the "bad guys" a little too much credit in that respect.) I plan to include this book in my recommended reading list for network security and intrusion detection professionals. It is simple and well-written, and contains the right sort of information for someone trying to understand common security incidents.

Cliff Stoll's book was the last to detail a truly high-end compromise, perpetrated by individuals employed by a foreign intelligence service. When will the Honeynet Project bag "the big one?"

(Disclaimer: The publisher sent me a free review copy.)

"Know Your Enemy" from the Honeynet Project...
team (led by Lance Spitzner) is an amazing account on adventures in computer
security. This superb book provides the summary of two years of the project
operation. Aimed to gather and analyze more information about malicious
hackers, the project provided security community with unique insights into
attacks, tricks, and even personalities of hackers. The network (now a
combination of networks in several places worldwide) was deployed for the
single purpose of being penetrated by remote attackers (or blackhats, as
they are called in the book). Their actions were then recorded, studied and
presented in this book and papers on the project web site
.... Real production systems (Linux, UNIX,
Windows) were deployed within the Honeynet.

Leveraging his military background, Lance Spitzner explains why it is
crucial to get first hand information on computer underground operations.
"Information is power" and in computer security there is a serious lack of
information about the adversaries. Most of the available information comes
as 'too little, too late' such as for a company that gets first-hand
knowledge of hackers right after seeing "u r 0wned" on their web site. And
even in this case other companies cannot learn from mistakes, since the
break-in will be kept as secret as possible.

The typical Honeynet break-in produces the following information. What
reconnaissance activity was performed by an attacker before the intrusion?
Which network service was exploited? What exact exploit string or buffer
overflow was used? What attacked did after getting access to the system? How
he or she retained access to the system? How did he or she use the system?
The answers are in the book!

In some of the attacks, the logs of IRC (Internet Relay Chat) conversations
between hackers were recorded. They reveal not only the technology, but also
some of the motivations of intruders. Some stories from the book border on
impossible, such as the case where the streaming video sent by hackers was
captured by the Honeynet team.

The book also provides full details on designing, building and
maintaining the honeynet, including the risks of running a honeynet. To
be more precise, they describe a Generation I honeynet, since now the
project has moved to more sophisticated security technology. The
project uses stringent standards for data control (preventing attacker
from causing trouble to third parties), data collection (recording
everything that happens on the network) and data collection
(aggregating attack data from several honeynets).

Overall, as Bruce Schneier said in the book's foreword: "Great stuff,
and it 's all real"

Anton Chuvakin, Ph.D. is a Senior Security Analyst with a major
information security company.

Many an author has written about hackers and computer criminals, but more often it's not from first-hand knowledge. Know Your Enemy is unique is that it is written in the first person. The book is a chronicle of The Honeynet Project; which is a group of security professionals dedicated to learning the tools, tactics and motives of hackers in order to share what they have learned from those encounters. The group was formed due to the every growing complexity of today's networks, and that no single individual has the complete set of skills necessary to understand the forensics behind computer attacks.

The book centers around honey pots and honey network that the Honeynet Project designed. A honey pot is a computer designed to look like something that an intruder can hack into. One example of a honey pot is to install a machine on a network with no particular purpose other than to log all attempted accesses to it. Similarly, a honeynet is a network designed to be compromised.

The function of the honeynet is that when attackers probe, attack and attempt to hack a system, the administrators of the honeynet are able to observe all of their activities, and use that knowledge to design stronger systems. By building such a network and understanding the scope attacks against it, one can understand their adversary, and can better protect their corporate information systems assets.

The book is divided into three parts. The first part shows how the group planned and built the Honeynet. The second part goes into an in-depth analysis of the logs gathered during attacks. While part 3 looks at the threats, motives and tools that the enemy employs in their attacks.

The book is written by technical experts, but in a language that doesn't require a strong technical background. The book effectively shows how a hacker thinks and operates. Most often than not, the hacker simply bypasses the normal security mechanism in place. Know Your Enemy takes all of the lessons learned from hundreds of attacks against the honeynet and shows how to better design systems that is resilient against attack.

Know Your Enemy is not only an extremely important security book, it is a fascinating read. For any security practitioner wants to truly understand the risks their networks face on a daily basis, Know Your Enemy is a must read.

Nothing could stop me from writing a review about "Know Your Enemy" and I'll tell you why: It's no secret, most of us can't turn on a television or a radio these days without hearing the United States needs better intelligence, better tools and methods for spying on enemies so America can prepare for attacks before they strike. Well, the same holds true in the information age. More intelligence must be built around network security and computer systems. Lance Spitzner's new book, "Know Your Enemy" shows us how. When I started reading this book, I couldn't believe what I was hearing. A network of computers called a honeynet, designed as an everyday corporate network used to capture, analyze and control the flow of data in and out of the network for studying the motives, tactics, and tools of the blackhat community? Wow!!

"Know Your Enemy" walks us through building and managing our own honeynet's. A CD-ROM comes with the book with tools to get us started. I speak from experience when I tell you this book helped me during my honeynet build. It showed me ways to capture critical information, log that information, and alert me via pager and e-mail in real time. The book talks about methods used for capturing keystrokes, advanced data analysis, and ways by which to capture and control the data. There are chock full of real world scenario's directed at dealing with worms. As we read through the book we get the chance to view how systems are exploited and what made them vulnerable. Lance Spitzner takes us step-by-step through real world attacks initiated by real blackhats and crackers. Reading this book is like reading someone's diary from the beginning only the information is freely shared and extremely valuable. "Know Your Enemy" took me down the path I needed to go. It will take you to the next level of security everyone might want to strongly consider. One, that's more analytical and intelligent, one that teaches us to be more proactive. My favorite chapter in this book was "In Their Own Words". That chapter was over 100 pages of captured keystrokes between the blackhats that took over the honeynet and...well...you should get the book and read it for yourself. It's a trip.

Richard La Bella, MCSE, CCSE, CCNA

"Know Your Enemy" begins with this simple yet striking observation: no military would plan to fight a battle without trying to learn as much as possible about the enemy -- their capabilities, their equipment, normal patterns of observation, and so on. But these rudiments of "tactical intelligence" have long been neglected in computer security. This book describes the Honeynet project (www.honeynet.org), a group that sets up so-called "honeypot" systems in order to observe (and learn about) the people who then try to attack them.

One fact that is especially striking, and more than a little frightening, is the short amount of time that elapses between new systems being connected to the Internet and the first attempts to break into them. The author tells of one system that got hit within 15 minutes of plugging it in!

The book is divided into three parts: how to set up a honeynet, how to analyze the collected data, and what the author has learned about "the enemy" in doing so.

The first part will be most interesting to those strange folks like me who, at one point or another, have set up "tripwires" on their systems to see who might be jiggling the doorknobs. The thought process involved in setting up a honeypot system, however, is more generally useful, because it helps to train the mind to think about secure vs. insecure systems and trust in general. Students of system and/or network administration should find this helpful, even if they never set up a honeypot themselves.But it's also more generally useful for forensic analysis after a security incident.

Finally, there's part three, the discussion of what has been learned about the "black hat" community. This I found to be both the most interesting and the most frustrating part of the book. In particular, chapter 11 ("In Their Own Words") is at the same time a strong and weak point. This chapter consists mainly of a collection of intercepted chat logs between intruders, with some commentary and analysis interspersed. My concerns with this chapter are, first, it is rather long (over 100 pages); and second, the actual analysis is fairly limited, though having an actual psychologist in on the honeynet team does add an interesting touch.

Overall, this is an extremely valuable book for those with responsiblity for (and/or interest in) computer security. Taking into account my complaints about chapter 11, I give the book 4.5 stars, rounded up to 5.

This book describes the methods and findings of the Honeynet Project in
prose that is clear and easy to follow even for someone without a strong
background in computer technology. It shows that the members of the
blackhat community (more commonly called crackers or hackers) scan the
internet indiscriminatley, probing computers for secruity weaknesses
and exploiting those that they find. The book conveys this message
that needs to reach a wide audience: Blackhats look for any internet

attached computer that they can break into. They do not care if the
computer is powerful, contains valuable data, or has a fast connection.
They only care about its presence and crackability.

If you are under the delusion that blackhats are not interested in your
computer this book is an alarm clock ringing to wake you up. If you
are curious about how computers on the Internet are compromised this
book has the details you need (including a CDROM with useful programs)
to get a base understanding of the issues. If you are a data security
professional this book is a self test about what you should already know.
If you are a business manager responsible for Internet attached computers
this book provides information to help you make better decisions about
resource allocation for security.

The Honeynet Project is fairly young. The book covers what they
have learned to date from putting stock systems out on the Internet.
The final chapter is titled "The Future of the Honeynet". The promise
of that chapter addresses my primary complaint about the book. It just
covers the basics - unpatched default installations getting cracked by
wandering vandals. While the detection and analysis work of the Honeynet
Project is advanced they show in this book the literal and figurative
kiddie brats bullying systems with no security precautions applied.
This left me hungry for information on how more advanced hackers do
their attacks. I hope "Know Your Enemy Volume II" is not too far away.

Having said that I must acknowledge that the Internet has a massive
population of computers that are vulnerable to these basic attacks.
Through ignorance, indifference, or misplaced priorities computers are
attached to the Internet without being properly secured. Blackhats can
compromise these systems and use them to attack targets of choice -
including the infrastructre of the Internet itself.

Hopefully this book will gather an audience that will respond to its
implied call to action...

One of most exciting areas to emerge in information security has been in the area of honeynets. These are networks designed to be compromised and capture all of the tools and activity of attackers
The Honeynet Project is a volunteer organization dedicated to researching and learning cyber-threats, and sharing our lessons learned. The project is made up of 30 security professionals around the world. They learn about cyber-threats by deploying networks around the world to be compromised. Once compromised, they capture all of the attacker's tools and activity, analyze, and learn from that. The value to this research is there is very little theory involved, they are capturing and seeing what is happening in the Internet today.
Very neat!

A honeynet is the primary tool used to capture attacker's activity. It is a type of honeypot, specifically a high-interaction honeypot. As a honeypot, honeynets work on the concept that they should not see any activity, no one has authorization to interact with them. As a result, any inbound or outbound connections to the honeynet is most likely unauthorized activity. This simple concept makes it highly effective in detecting and capturing both known and unknown activity. Honeynets work as a highly controlled network made up of real systems and applications for attackers to probe and compromise.

The book is about honeynets, how to use them, and what you can learn. The book is broken into three parts. The first part is focused on what honeynets are, how they work, the different types, and technical details on how you can deploy them safely. The second part focuses on how to analyze all the different data a honeynet can collect (network and host based forensics, reverse engineering, centralized data correlation, etc). The third part is specific examples of several honeynets being hacked, including Win2000, Linux, and Solaris. What makes the book so interesting is it ties all these different elements together. You can learn more at http://www.honeynet.org/book/

The book was not written by a single individual, but by leading experts in their field. They attempted to combine the best experiences and skills from some of the leading individuals. The book was organized by the Honeynet Project, but the contributing authors include members of the Honeynet Research Alliance, individuals from the Department of Justice, and others who have helped us in the past and wanted to contribute. Some examples of authors include Honeynet Project members Brian Carrier who wrote several chapters and Max Kilger who wrote about profiling. Honeynet Research Alliance members include the work of the Greek Honeynet Project writing about hacked Linux systems, and the Mexican Honeynet Project writing about hacked Solaris systems. They also had outside experts help out, including Richard Salgado of the DoJ author about legal issues, and Dion Mendel from Australia write about Reverse Engineering.

-- To defend against your threats, you have to first know who your enemy is -- I recommend this book!

Most of the time, your only close-up view of a computer attack is trying to sort out how someone compromised your production system. But there is a way to get hands-on experience with attack analysis, and Know Your Enemy - Learning About Security Threats by The Honeynet Project (Addison-Wesley) shows you how.

The chapter breakout: The Beginning; Honeypots; Honeynets; Gen1 Honeynets; Gen2 Honeynets; Virtual Honeynets; Distributed Honeynets; Legal Issues; The Digital Crime Scene; Network Forensics; Computer Forensics Basics; UNIX Computer Forensics; Windows Computer Forensics; Reverse Engineering; Centralized Data Collection and Analysis; Profiling; Attacks and Exploits: Lessons Learned; Windows 2000 Compromise and Analysis; Linux Compromise; Example of Solaris Compromise; The Future; IPTables Firewall Script; Snort Configuration; Swatch Configuration; Network Configuration Summary; Honeywall Kernel Configuration; Gen2 rc.firewall Configuration; Resources and References; About The Authors; Index

If you're not familiar with the concept, a honeypot is a computer set up to gain the attention of network intruders. The concept is that the intruder will spend time with that box and leave the rest of the network alone. A honeynet is the same thing but only at a network level. The authors of this book are experts at setting up these kind of systems in order to see how attackers work and discover new exploits before they are used against actual production systems. They take you through all the different parts of the process; how to set up a honeypot/honeynet, how to analyze an attack, what legal considerations have to be kept in mind, and examples of exploits that actually were recorded and analyzed.

While there are plenty of books that talk about computer security, there are few that show you how to take the offensive and learn first-hand how to analyze and understand real-life attacks. This is a unique offering that will have high appeal for the security professional looking for in-depth understanding of the attacker mindset.

This is a requirement for anyone studying security or it is also a good read for those who aren't security professionals but want to understand more about the blackhat community. It really should be read by any computer professional to understand the threats and the tactics to deceive those who deceive us.
Overall, a great book and one to add to the collection (but easy to read cover to cover first!)

This book is a very interesting read and would recommend any CSO to read it. I've been to too many seminars where opions and products are the driving force of selling a product. This book gives an objective view and I have found it helpful in my own evaluations and have given me food for thought. The CD with the book gives some useful information and links to some very good articles, and tools.
I am designing one of the largest networks and security infrastructures in the world, and thought generating books even though they may not give you the complete answer wrangle your curiousity and indepth knowledge of others.
This will book can only expand on what you know or you don't know. Recommended