Intrusion Signatures and Analysis (Landmark) (Paperback)

by Matt Fearnow (Author), Stephen Northcutt (Author), Karen Frederick (Author), Mark Cooper (Author) "DID YOU EVER WATCH THE OLD cowboy-and-Indian movies on Saturday afternoon television when you were growing up?..." (more)
Key Phrases: Probability the Source Address Was Spoofed, Defense Recommendations, Severity Target Criticality (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
Stephen Northcutt and his coauthors note in the superb Intrusion Signatures and Analysis that there's really no such thing as an attack that's never been seen before. The book documents scores of attacks on systems of all kinds, showing exactly what security administrators should look for in their logs and commenting on attackers' every significant command. This is largely a taxonomy of hacker strategies and the tools used to implement them. As such, it's an essential tool for people who want to take a scientific, targeted approach to defending information systems. It's also a great resource for security experts who want to earn their Certified Intrusion Analyst ratings from the Global Incident Analysis Center (GIAC)--it's organized, in part, around that objective.

The book typically introduces an attack strategy with a real-life trace--usually attributed to a real administrator--from TCPdump, Snort, or some sort of firewall (the trace's source is always indicated). The trace indicates what is happening (i.e., what weakness the attacker is trying to exploit) and the severity of the attack (using a standard metric that takes into account the value of the target, the attack's potential to do damage, and the defenses arrayed against the attack). The attack documentation concludes with recommendations on how defenses could have been made stronger. These pages are great opportunities to learn how to read traces and take steps to strengthen your systems' defenses.

The book admirably argues that security administrators should take some responsibility for the greater good of the Internet by, for example, using egress filtering to prevent people inside their networks from spoofing their source address (thus defending other networks from their own users' malice). The authors (and the community of white-hat security specialists that they represent) have done and continue to do a valuable service to all Internet users. Supplement this book with Northcutt's excellent Network Intrusion Detection, which takes a more general approach to log analysis and is less focused on specific attack signatures. --David Wall

Topics covered:

• External attacks on networks and hosts, as they appear to administrators and detection systems monitoring log files
• How to read log files generally
• How to report attacks and interact with the global community of good-guy security specialists
• The most commonplace critical security weaknesses
• Traces that document reconnaissance probes
• Denial-of-service attacks
• Trojans
• Overflow attacks
• Other black-hat strategies

Product Description
Intrusion Signatures and Analysis opens with an introduction into the format of some of the more common sensors and then begins a tutorial into the unique format of the signatures and analyses used in the book. After a challenging four-chapter review, the reader finds page after page of signatures, in order by categories. Then the content digs right into reaction and responses covering how sometimes what you see isn¿t always what is happening. The book also covers how analysts can spend time chasing after false positives. Also included is a section on how attacks have shut down the networks and web sites of Yahoo, and E-bay and what those attacks looked like. Readers will also find review questions with answers throughout the book, to be sure they comprehend the traces and material that has been covered.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 448 pages
• Publisher: Sams (January 29, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0735710635
• ISBN-13: 978-0735710634
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 7 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #271,811 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

43 of 43 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A good start, but proceed with caution: uncertain analysis, February 2, 2001

By	Richard Bejtlich "TaoSecurity.com" (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Disclaimer: I withdrew a chapter from this book, and my words appear on p. 25. "Intrusion Signatures" tries to share the collective wisdom of SANS GIAC certification candidates, tempered by more experienced SANS editors. I applaud their intentions, but the uneven analysis and commentary warrants faint praise. New analysts flying solo should not read this book. Analysts with a guru to consult should get his or her input before trusting the book's interpretations.

Examples: (1) Eric Hacker expertly discusses a Windows password problem on pp. 77-85, but a significant trace is missing on p. 81. This causes the following dozen traces to not match their respective explanations. Would a new analyst notice? (2) Several times (p. 87, etc.) the authors fail to realize "public" is a common default SNMP "read" community string, while "private" is the "read/write" counterpart. This mistake is crucial elsewhere in the book. (3) The editors call a clear example of round-trip-time determination a "half-open DNS scan." It's ok for certification students to make judgement errors, but SANS editors should explain why that view isn't correct. (4) A very questionable "SYN flood" trace in ch. 10 doesn't match the "reproduction" of the same trace in the question-and-answer appendix -- that one's missing a crucial packet! (5) A "spoofed FTP request" in ch.11 looks like an active FTP data attempt to me. That concept is explained on p. 329, but the authors don't apply the same reasoning to ch.11's example. Why?

On the positive side, I was impressed by Mark Cooper's work on buffer overflows and ICMP redirects. Some of the student work is also first-rate, but it may be tough for new readers to make the necessary distinctions.

The authors owe it to the target audience (new analysts) to deliver accurate explanations. Different interpretations are expected, but errors like those listed require scrutiny. The work is sincere -- I just can't recommend this book to inexperienced intrusion detectors.

18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars When a good book is worth a thousand experiences!, February 23, 2002

By	Marco De Vivo "mata-hackers" (Miami, Florida United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This is the best book about Intrusion Signatures published yet.
I teach computer security at a local university, and with the only help of this book, I could take care of all the practical aspects of my last course. If you have already a good background on this field, and read and understand thoroughly the book, then you can afford any related security certification test.
Chapters 3 through 17, present several well documented cases, which, in turn, are discussed following the same standard:
- Presentation
- Source of Trace
- Detect Generated by
- Probability the Source Address Was spoofed
- Attack Description
- Attack Mechanism
- Correlations
- Evidence of Active Targeting
- Severity
- Defense Recommendations
- Questions

Chapter 1 introduces the reader to Analysis of Logs (including Snort, Tcpdump, and Syslog), IDS, and Firewalls. Even being a quick review, it is quite useful, though.
Chapter 2 explains the way the cases are studied.

The covered vulnerabilities and attacks include:
- Internet Security Threats
- Routers and Firewalls Attacks
- IP Spoofing
- Networks Mapping and Scanning
- Denial of Service
- Trojans
- Assorted Exploits
- Buffer Overflows
- IP Fragmentation
- False Positives
- Crafted Packets

At the bottom line, this is one of the 5 best computer security books I ever read. Even for non experts, the book can be a valuable tool to improve the understanding on this field.
Try it.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Great Title For Security Geeks to Learn Packet Forensics, July 10, 2001

By	Randy Esser (Escondido, CA USA) - See all my reviews

I read this book out of general interest and a need to dig deeper into the technical aspects of security, and intrusion detection in particular. For that, this title is perfect!

It's great to learn intrusion detection, packet analysis, forensics, attack methodologies, attack recognition, and similar topics. And oh, by the way, if you have any interest at all in certification, Intrusion Signatures and Analysis is the study guide for one of the hottest new certs there is: SANS GIAC Intrusion Detection In Depth.