Network Security Tools

Writing, Hacking, and Modifying Security Tools

If you're an advanced security professional, then you know that the battle to protect online privacy continues to rage on. Security chat rooms, especially, are resounding with calls for vendors to take more responsibility to release products that are more secure. In fact, with all the information and code that is passed on a daily basis, it's a fight that may never end. Fortunately, there are a number of open source security tools that give you a leg up in the battle.

Often a security tool does exactly what you want, right out of the box. More frequently, you need to customize the tool to fit the needs of your network structure. Network Security Tools shows experienced administrators how to modify, customize, and extend popular open source security tools such as Nikto, Ettercap, and Nessus.

This concise, high-end guide discusses the common customizations and extensions for these tools, then shows you how to write even more specialized attack and penetration reviews that are suited to your unique network environment. It also explains how tools like port scanners, packet injectors, network sniffers, and web assessment tools function.

Some of the topics covered include:

• Writing your own network sniffers and packet injection tools
  
• Writing plugins for Nessus, Ettercap, and Nikto
  
• Developing exploits for Metasploit
  
• Code analysis for web applications
  
• Writing kernel modules for security applications, and understanding rootkits.

While many books on security are either tediously academic or overly sensational, Network Security Tools takes an even-handed and accessible approach that will let you quickly review the problem and implement new, practical solutions--without reinventing the wheel. In an age when security is critical, Network Security Tools is the resource you want at your side when locking down your network.

About the Authors
Nitesh Dhanjani is an information security consultant. He has performed network, application, web-application, wireless, source-code, host security reviews and security architecture design services for many of the Fortune 500 firms. He is the author of "HackNotes: Linux and Unix Security" and a contributing author for the best selling security book "Hacking Exposed 4".

Nitesh graduated from Purdue University with both a Bachelors and Masters degree in Computer Science.

Justin Clarke is a Manager in Ernst & Young's Rudolph W. Giuliani Advanced Security Center in New York. He has over 6 years of security experience in network, web application, source code and wireless testing work for some of the largest organizations in the United States. Prior to joining E&Y in the US, Justin did corporate and government security work in New Zealand.

Justin is active in developing security tools for penetrating web applications, servers, and wireless networks and as a compulsive tinkerer he can't leave anything alone without at least trying to see how it works. Justin got his Bachelor's degree in Computer Science from Canterbury University in New Zealand.