Practical Packet Analysis: Using Wireshark to Solve Real-World Network Problems Review

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(More customer reviews)To use "American Idol" lingo, you've already read reviews by Randy Jackson and Paula Abdul. It's time for the truth from Simon Cowell -- Practical Packet Analysis (PPA) is a disaster. I am not biased against books for beginners; see my five star review of Computer Networking by Jeanna Matthews. I am not biased against author Chris Sanders; he seems like a nice guy who is trying to write a helpful book. I am not a misguided newbie; I've written three books involving traffic analysis. I did not skim the book; I read all of it on a flight from San Jose to Washington Dulles. I do not dislike publisher No Starch; I just wrote a five star review for Designing BSD Rootkits by Joseph Kong.
PPA is written for beginners, or at least it should be intended for beginners givens its subject matter. It appears the author is also a beginner, or worse, someone who has not learned fundamental networking concepts. This situation results in a book that will mislead readers who are not equipped to recognize the numerous technical and conceptual problems in the text. This review will highlight several to make my point. These are not all of the problems in the book.
p 21: This is painfully wrong on multiple levels: "When one computer needs to send data to another, it sends an ARP request to the switch it is connected to. The switch then sends an ARP broadcast packet to all of the computers connected to it... The switch now has a route established to that destination computer... This newly obtained information is stored in the switch's ARP cache so that the switch does not have to send a new ARP broadcast every time it needs to send data to a computer." This misconception is aggravated on p 62 in the discussion of ARP.
p 65, Figure 6-5: The TCP three way handshake is not SYN - ACK - SYN.
p 78, Figure 7-3: The TCP three way handshake is not SYN - ACK - ACK.
p 79: Packet 5 is not "the packet that was lost and is now being retransmitted." Packet 2 is.
p 80: There is no "ICMP type 0, code 1 packet."
p 85: This boggles the mind: "Immediately after that ARP packet, we see a bunch of NetBIOS traffic... If that other IP address wasn't a sign that something is wrong, then all of this NetBIOS traffic definitely is. NetBIOS is an older protocol that is typically only used as a backup when TCP/IP isn't working. The appearance of NetBIOS traffic here means that since Beth's computer was unable to successfully connect to the Internet with TCP/IP, it reverted back to NetBIOS as an alternate means of communication -- but that also failed. (Anytime you see NetBIOS on your network, it is often a good sign that something is not quite right.)"
p 85: This "troubleshooting" example highlights the different default gateways for Barry and Beth as being the "biggest anomaly" causing Beth's computer to not work. The author ignores the fact that Barry and Beth have computers with the same MAC addresses.
p 89: Traces recorded at a client and server are compared. The author says "The two capture files look amazingly similar; in fact, the only difference between the two files is that the source and destination addresses on the SYN packets have been switched around." Good grief.
p 106: Another "troubleshooting" scenario wonders if a "slow network" problem is related to the fact that tracerouting out from a host fails to produce a response from the router. However, the traceroute continues past the router, so connectivity exists (missed by the author). He says "we know our problem lies with our network's internal router because we were never able to receive an ICMP response from it. Routers are very complicated devices, so we aren't going to delve into the semantics of exactly what is wrong with the router."
pp 107-8: Yet another "troubleshooting" issue wonders why seemingly "double packets" are seen while sniffing on a host. The author wonders if "misconfigured port mirroring" could be the problem, ignoring his statement that the trace was collected on the host in question. He doesn't notice that each "double packet" has a unique MAC address pairing, i.e., packet 1 involves 00:d0:59:aa:af:80 > 00:01:96:3c:3f:54 and packet 2 involves 00:01:96:3c:3f:a8 > 00:20:78:e1:5a:80. Assuming 00:d0:59:aa:af:80 is the only MAC address for the troubled host, there is no way this machine could see traffic "bouncing back" -- the destination MAC address for the dupe packet is 00:20:78:e1:5a:80.
p 110: Another "troubleshooting" example fails to recognize that packets 1-18 and 29 are part of one unique TCP session, and 19-28 are an entirely different session. Packet 29's RST ACK is not an "acknowledgement" of the RST in packet 28; besides not being an actual protocol mechanism, those packets are from different sessions anyway!
p 112: "More ominously, most of the traffic is being sent with the TCP PSH flag on, which forces a receiving computer to skip its buffer and push that traffic straight through, ahead of any other traffic. That is almost always a bad sign." It's a bad sign when you don't know what you're talking about, apparently.
p 129: "Display filters make it easy to search for traffic such as DCEPRC (sic), NetBIOS, or ICMP, which should not be seen under normal circumstances." I guess Windows networks never use at least DCERPC regularly?
This book should not have been published. The author should sit down with Interconnections, 2nd Ed by Radia Perlman, Troubleshooting Campus Networks by Priscilla Oppenheimer/Joseph Bardwell, and The Internet and its Protocols by Adrian Farrel, and learn how networks operate. Then he should have Gerald Combs REALLY provide a technical edit of PPA, since it's clear Mr Combs probably skimmed this book without catching the issues noted above.
The only positives I can say for PPA is that, like other No Starch books, it's form factor and readability is excellent. The diagrams are clear (albeit often misunderstood) and the obvious typos are few. As far as learning anything, the mention of "Expert Infos" on p 100 was nice.

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Wireshark Network Analysis: The Official Wireshark Certified Network Analyst Study Guide Review

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(More customer reviews)I was a little nervous when I started reading this book. Chapter 1 provided an overview of network analysis, but had a lot of "personality." When I read, "Wait...more data is coming in...and more...and...SCREECH!" I wasn't too sure if I was going to finish the book. At over 700 pages, I was hoping that each page contained only "meat and potatoes," without a lot of dry humor and meaningless analogies. Thankfully, a few pages later I began what turned into a great read -- full of solid content.
Wireshark Network Analysis goes well beyond Wireshark functionality. Although the first several chapters outline how to best use Wireshark -- examining the settings, filters, and other configurations -- I think the true value of the book is in the detailed explanations of network traffic analysis. For instance, pg. 304 delves into DNS. This section tells the reader exactly what DNS is used for and provides an analysis of normal and abnormal DNS traffic. It also shows screenshots of the packet, displays and describes its contents. This type of analysis is provided throughout the book and covers all forms of network traffic (including suspect traffic -- my personal favorite).
Page 563 resonated with me, as I'm a firm believer in baselining network traffic. In this section, Wireshark Network Analysis details the importance of baselining and the types of traffic to focus on. Like other sections, this section also provides screenshots and shows how to analyze traffic and packet statistics.
There were minimal grammar errors, and it does seem like the case studies were not tech edited by the book editor -- many of them contained several grammar mistakes. Although, it does appear that the case studies were all submitted by third parties and probably used as-is. Nevertheless, I can provide plenty of other examples as to why Wireshark Network Analysis is a great book. There are plenty of screenshots, review questions with answers on the next page (instead of making the reader turn to the back of the book), and links to tons of packet captures for analyzing on your own. Overall, the book is well-written and, in my opinion, the best network analysis book on the market today.


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Wireshark is rated #2 in the Top 100 Network Security Tools by sectools.org. Wireshark is the world's most popular network analyzer tool. This book is the ultimate resource on Wireshark which is a MUST HAVE tool used by network IT professionals to troubleshoot, secure and optimize networks. Readers learn to capture wired and wireless traffic, focus on the cause of slow web browsing, identify why applications don't run properly across the network, locate the cause of poor VoIP call quality, determine why WLANs are plagued with problems and more. The author, Laura Chappell is the founder of Wireshark University and Chappell University and has been analyzing networks for over 20 years - the book is written in a clear manner with hundreds of screenshots for the visual learner. The foreword was written by Gerald Combs, creator of Wireshark.Wireshark Network Analysis covers the test objectives for the Wireshark Certified Network Analyst Exam and includes test questions and answers for all topics covered. Filled with 45 real-life case studies, Wireshark Network Analysis takes you inside small, medium and large corporations to see how they solved network problems in a more efficient, accurate way using Wireshark. Book supplements are available online at www.wiresharkbook.com.

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Practical Intrusion Analysis: Prevention and Detection for the Twenty-First Century Review

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(More customer reviews)I must start this review by stating the lead author lists me in the Acknowledgments and elsewhere in the book, which I appreciate. I also did consulting work years ago for the lead author's company, and I know the lead author to be a good guy with a unique eye for applying geography to network security data. Addison-Wesley provided me a review copy.
I did not participate in the writing process for Practical Intrusion Analysis (PIA), but after reading it I think I know how it unfolded. The lead author had enough material to write his two main sections: ch 10, Geospatial Intrusion Detection, and ch 11, Visual Data Communications. He realized he couldn't publish a 115-page book, so he enlisted five contributing authors who wrote chapters on loosely related security topics. Finally the lead author wrote two introductory sections: ch 1, Network Overview, and ch 2, Infrastructure Monitoring. This publication-by-amalgamation method seldom yields coherent or helpful material, despite the superior production efforts of a company like Addison-Wesley. To put a point on PIA's trouble, there's only a single intrusion analyzed in the book, and it's in the lead author's core section. The end result is a book you can skip, although it would be good for chapters 4 and 10 to be published separately as digital "Short Cuts" on InformIT.
Chapters 1 and 2 are not needed. Anyone who needs to learn about networking can read a basic book already published. Ch 2 does mention that 802.1AE (if ever implemented) will hamper network traffic inspection, but you could read that online.
Ch 3 is odd because it begins by mentioning well-worn methods to evade network detection, followed by a discussion of the merits of Snort vs Bro. Someone who had to read the material in chapters 1 and 2 is not going to understand the Snort discussion, especially when it mentions byte_test, depth, regex, http_inspect, uricontent, Structured Exception Handlers, and 16 line Snort signatures. I liked seeing Bro mentioned, but the people who are going to be able to follow the sample Bro policy scripts on pages 75-78 are not the ones reading this book.
Ch 4 outlines several examples of writing signatures for Snort. This section is actually interesting, but you have to know Snort and certain advanced topics pretty well to get value from this section. Readers need to compensate for the far-too-small screenshots and lack of supporting details while reading the examples. Readers also need to figure out what the author is doing, such as when he sets up a client-side exploit against FlashGet by starting a malicious FTP server with flashget-overflow.pl. By the second example he's dropping warnings like "Had Core's advisory told you from where the size of the call to memcpy was coming, you might have to refine the signature to check for the appropriate behavior; unfortunately, the disassembly left out that argument:" [cue the ASM]. The bottom line with this chapter is this: know your audience, and write for them -- not your buddies. People who can follow contributions like this "at line speed" aren't going to read this book.
By ch 5 the "practical" aspect of this book has been left behind, with a discussion of "proactive intrusion prevention and response via attack graphs, which is really an academically-derived discussion of "topological vulnerability analysis." No one does this in the operational world, and no one will. Pages 143-144 talk about IDMEF, even though that specification died years ago. (There is still an independently-maintained -- as of Feb 09 -- Snort-IDMEF plugin. I don't know anyone in industry using it.)
Ch 6 is a generic overview of using network flows. The only new material is less than a page on IPFIX, which is just a table comparing that newer format with NetFlow. Ch 7 is called "Web Application Firewalls," but it's just an overview. Read Ivan Ristic's Apache Security or Ryan Barnett's Preventing Web Attacks with Apache if you want to know this topic. Ch 7 is titled "Wireless IDS/IPS," which is an even shallower overview than the previous topic. In none of these chapters do we have anything practical nor any intrusions analyzed. Ch 9 discusses physical security, but I didn't think it fit with the intended theme for the book.
I thought chapter 10 was interesting. Geospatial and visualization techniques do have a role in many operations, and ch 10 had the only example of an intrusion analysis. Unfortunately I don't think readers could take ch 10 and implement their own operational system. Ch 11 seemed irrelevant in light of the excellent visualization books by Raffy Marty and Greg Conti.
The book finishes with ch 12, Return on Investment: Business Justification. It was totally unnecessary: cite some regulations, list some breach costs, then compare ROI, NPV, and IRR. Talk a little about MSSPs and cyber liability insurance, then end. If you really want the best discussion of security costs, read Managing Cybersecurity Resources by Gordon and Loeb.
The subtitle for PIA is "Prevention and Detection for the Twenty-First Century." Readers will not find that in PIA. The lead author started with a kernel of a good idea, but the end result does not deliver enough real value to to readers. The lead author's material, and the chapter on Snort signature writing, could have been published as digital Short Cuts, or including in a compendium of chapters in a "survey" book. If you want to read a book intrusion analysis, you're more likely to be satisfied reading a book on intrusion forensics.

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"Practical Intrusion Analysis provides a solid fundamental overview of the art and science of intrusion analysis." –Nate Miller, Cofounder, Stratum SecurityThe Only Definitive Guide to New State-of-the-Art Techniques in Intrusion Detection and PreventionRecently, powerful innovations in intrusion detection and prevention have evolved in response to emerging threats and changing business environments. However, security practitioners have found little reliable, usable information about these new IDS/IPS technologies. In Practical Intrusion Analysis, one of the field's leading experts brings together these innovations for the first time and demonstrates how they can be used to analyze attacks, mitigate damage, and track attackers. Ryan Trost reviews the fundamental techniques and business drivers of intrusion detection and prevention by analyzing today's new vulnerabilities and attack vectors. Next, he presents complete explanations of powerful new IDS/IPS methodologies based on Network Behavioral Analysis (NBA), data visualization, geospatial analysis, and more.Writing for security practitioners and managers at all experience levels, Trost introduces new solutions for virtually every environment. Coverage includesAssessing the strengths and limitations of mainstream monitoring tools and IDS technologies

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Fundamentals of Network Security Review

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(More customer reviews)The book is well written and the concepts it covers are both current and relative. It covers the concepts of basic computer and network security. It has alot of illustration figures. After each chapter there are "Key term quiz" and "Multiple choice quiz" which are helpfull for the students to test their self.
It's great.

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This hands-on, project-based approach to the fundamentals of network security concepts and skills helps students understand security best practices, laws, and standards that will enable them to build a complete security program.This book introduces a strong foundation that includes security policy, planning, and development of good processes.A step-by-step design teaches students security implementation using recent advances in security tools, such as firewalls, VPN's, encryption, techniques, and intrusion detection devises.Platform-specific defenses are revealed for the desktop, Windows networks, UNIX, Internet, and wireless systems.Laws and government regulation are also covered, including the Patriot Act, homeland security initiatives, and special information on relevant state laws.

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Security in an IPv6 Environment Review

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(More customer reviews)I've been in security for over 10 years and hadn't had to deal much with IPv6 issues until I got a new job at a government facility. That was it, there was just too much going on and too many things that were critical. This book helped make sense of it and helped me understand how many new security issues there are with IPv6 deployments, and especially IPv6 deployments that are co-mingled with either internal or external IPv4 deployments. This is the kind of book that allows the security professional and the network engineer to come to terms and make the right decisions in planning, executing and securing a network in that kind of environment. IPv6 isn't going anywhere and if you're in the security or networking field, you have to deal with it. This book helps get you through it and follows best practices for infosec pro and engineer alike.

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Analyze Key Security Mechanisms and Approaches with this practical primer, the first book on the market to cover critical IPv6 security considerations.Dan Minoli, author of over 50 books on telecommunications and networks, and Jake Kouns, Chairman, CEO and CFO of the Open Security Foundation, discuss IPv6 security vulnerabilities, considerations, and mechanisms, and survey approaches for ensuring reliable and controlled IPv6 migration. The authors pool knowledge from industry resources, RFCs, and their own considerable security experience, discussing key IPv6 features, security issues, and potential exploitation of IPv6 protocol. They examine use of firewalls and encryption, and the fundamental topic of IPSec in IPv6 environments.Protect Networks from New and Growing Threats An increasing amount of mission-critical commercial and military operations are supported by distributed, mobile, always-connected, hybrid public-private networks, especially IPv6-based networks. The number of attackers or inimical agents continues to grow, and all computing environments must feature high-assurance security mechanisms. Even administrators in pure IPv4 environments require at least a rudimentary understanding of IPv6 security principles to safeguard traditional networks. This comprehensive book explains why security savvy approaches are indispensible and includes considerations for mixed IPv4 and IPv6 migration environments. More than an exhaustive treatment of IPv6 and security topics, this text is a point of departure for anyone adjusting to this technological transition and subtending security considerations. About the AuthorsDaniel Minoli, director of terrestrial systems engineering for SES Americom, has done extensive work with IPv6, including four books on the subject.Jake Kouns (CISSP, CISA, CISM), director of information security and network services for Markel Corporation, is also co-founder and president of the Open Security Foundation.

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Hacking Exposed Wireless: Wireless Security Secrets & Solutions Review

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(More customer reviews)I have a ton of those red covered books on the book shelf. The Hacking Exposed series has been good to me and good to every person trying to learn security. So, I was excited to have my new green covered Hacking Exposed Wireless book show up at the house so I could learn some wireless hacking. The first 60 pages or so of background technical content is interesting but not totally necessary to get going with the topic. I do realize to be a good "hacker" you need to understand the technology, but the other HE's have been able to balance giving us the background and still able to use the tools for some hacking action.
I felt that once we finally got into the technical content (starts with 802.11 discovery) that they talked around topics but really didn't cover how to actually "do" anything. There isn't much to running kismet after configuring the one or two lines of the conf file. Then its a simple #kismet or $sudo kismet and it runs. Netstumbler is even easier since you have GUI to help you out and its on Windows and same same with KisMAC on OS X.
The cracking WEP section starts out with saying use an old kernel and the madwifi-old drivers. That may have been great advice when the book was published but it is certainly not useful for the average user today especially since it appears the bugs have been worked out of the new madwifi driver and aircrack-ng. (We do have to take into account that I read the book in Sep 07 and it was published in March 07). The section on using aircrack to break WEP on linux on pages 180-182 was decent but certainly not anything you cant get on the aircrack-ng homepage. A little more content on how we do fake authentication attempts and then why and how we have aireplay send our ARP packets would have been nice. The current version of aireplay when you run that capture makes you pick which capture we want to use, since they don't cover what packet to use it may be difficult for the person following along. The shell of the instructions are there, but the details are missing.
The opportunity to shine by talking about the Fragmentation and ChopChop attacks is devoid of actually using aircrack-ng or other tools to launch the attacks, so it falls short.
The Hacking Hotspots section (CH 9) looked to be the redeeming section at first glance but much like the WEP cracking section is lacking any useful screenshots or how to use any of the tools they mention. The most frustrating part was the author telling us how they have a slick SSH set up to use public hotspots but provides no information on how to set up one of our own. The tunneling using ozymanDNS attack gives no useful information on how to use the tool, the billing attacks section gives no useful information either. While I understand its illegal to steal wifi, if you aren't going to actually cover it, don't bother talking all around it. The client attack section consisted of installing nmap and nessus and running it against clients on the LAN. That section was the perfect set up to really cover KARMA in-depth, sadly a missed opportunity.
The bluetooth section (CH 10) that looks to be written by Kevin Finisterre was excellent and met the high standards previous HE books set. He walks us through a fictional scenario with real code and explains how we can use the code to exploit bluetooth vulnerabilities on OSX and gives us the link to the code :-)
Overall I was disappointed in the book which is unfortunate because the authors are known to be very knowledgeable and skilled people in the security industry. It can be a good reference on wifi background and hardware if you need one but it falls a bit short IMO of being as useful as some of the other HE titles.

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Hacking Exposed Wireless, Second Edition Review

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(More customer reviews)I reviewed the first edition of Hacking Exposed: Wireless (HEW) in May 2007, and offered four stars. Three years later I can confidently say that Hacking Exposed: Wireless, 2nd Ed (HEW2) is a solid five star book. After reading my 2007 review, I believe the authors took my suggestions seriously, and those of other reviewers, and produced HEW2, the best book on wireless security available. If you want to understand wireless -- and not just 802.11, but also Bluetooth, ZigBee, and DECT -- HEW2 is the book for you.
Books in the Hacking Exposed (HE) series that implement the winning HE formula do the following: 1) explain a technology, including aspects you may have never heard of before; 2) explain how to break that technology; and 3) explain how to mitigate the attack, if possible. HEW2 uses this methodology and the result is a great HE book. HEW2 is also cross-platform, usually providing advice on using Windows, Linux, or Mac OS X. Furthermore, this advice is exceptionally practical and relevant. The authors not only describe what works, but also what doesn't work. I got the sense that I was speaking with a pro who was willing to share tips from the trenches, not theory copied from a Web site.
Other aspects of HEW2 make it a winner. The authors post three free chapters on their Web site as background that they didn't want to include in the main text. Their Web site also contains code and other background material from the book, like pcap files. Although I am not on the front lines of wireless hacking, I got the sense that these authors do live on that edge. They explained Software Defined Radio, hardware specifically for attacking wireless devices, hardware mods, and other custom approaches that extend beyond normal wireless techniques. I also liked their "end-to-end" examples for attacking Mac OS X and Windows, integrating client-side attacks with wireless activities. Their use of NetMon and Metasploit was solid. Finally, I loved that HEW2 doesn't start and end with 802.11; it also incorporates Bluetooth, ZigBee, and DECT.
I have no complaints for the authors of HEW2. My only suggestion would be to incorporate attacks on GSM and other mobile technologies into the third edition.
If you want to learn how to attack and defend wireless devices, HEW2 is the right book. Bravo.

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The latest wireless security solutions
Protect your wireless systems from crippling attacks using the detailed security information in this comprehensive volume. Thoroughly updated to cover today's established and emerging wireless technologies, Hacking Exposed Wireless, second edition reveals how attackers use readily available and custom tools to target, infiltrate, and hijack vulnerable systems. This book discusses the latest developments in Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, ZigBee, and DECT hacking, and explains how to perform penetration tests, reinforce WPA protection schemes, mitigate packet injection risk, and lock down Bluetooth and RF devices. Cutting-edge techniques for exploiting Wi-Fi clients, WPA2, cordless phones, Bluetooth pairing, and ZigBee encryption are also covered in this fully revised guide.
Build and configure your Wi-Fi attack arsenal with the best hardware and software tools
Explore common weaknesses in WPA2 networks through the eyes of an attacker
Leverage post-compromise remote client attacks on Windows 7 and Mac OS X
Master attack tools to exploit wireless systems, including Aircrack-ng, coWPAtty, Pyrit, IPPON, FreeRADIUS-WPE, and the all new KillerBee
Evaluate your threat to software update impersonation attacks on public networks
Assess your threat to eavesdropping attacks on Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, ZigBee, and DECT networks using commercial and custom tools
Develop advanced skills leveraging Software Defined Radio and other flexible frameworks
Apply comprehensive defenses to protect your wireless devices and infrastructure

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