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

This book shares the lessons of the Honeynet Project, in which leading security professionals built networks designed to be compromised. From this they learned everything possible from the "blackhat" hackers who took the bait: their tools, their tactics, and their motives. The insights in this book will go a long way towards helping security professionals protect their networks against real attacks. If that's not enough, the book shows you how to build your own honeynet, learning even more about today's most significant exploits -- and tomorrow's. Lance Spitzer, leader of The Honeynet Project, begins by introducing honeynets and honeypots (the parts that make up the honeynet network), explaining how they work, and showing how to build one. Next, Know Your Enemy focuses on an in-depth analysis of attacks, including detailed analyses of compromised systems, and techniques for containing blackhat hackers while you gather evidence and work to identify them. Part III takes you into the minds of the blackhat hackers, focusing on the evidence left by actual attacks -- not theory or speculation. For all computer security specialists, and network and system administrators concerned with intrusion detection and security.

For centuries, military organizations have relied on scouts to gather intelligence about the enemy. The scouts' mission was to find out who the enemy was, what they were doing, how they might attack, the weapons they use, and their ultimate objectives. Time and again this kind of data has proven critical in defending against, and defeating, the enemy.

In the field of information security, scouts have never existed. Very few organizations today know who their enemy is or how they might attack; when they might attack; what the enemy does once they compromise a system; and, perhaps most important, why they attack.

The Honeynet Project is changing this. A research organization of thirty security professionals, the group is dedicated to learning the tools, tactics, and motives of the blackhat community. As with military scouts, the mission is to gather valuable information about the enemy.

The primary weapon of the Honeynet Project is the Honeynet, a unique solution designed to capture and study the blackhat's every move. In this book you will learn in detail not only what the Honeynet Project has discovered about adversaries, but also how Honeynets are used to gather critical information.

Know Your Enemy includes extensive information about

• The Honeynet: A description of a Honeynet; information on how to plan, build, and maintain one; and coverage of risks and other related issues.
• The Analysis: Step-by-step instructions on how to capture and analyze data from a Honeynet.
• The Enemy: A presentation of what the project learned about the blackhat community, including documented compromised systems.

Aimed at both security professionals and those with a nontechnical background, this book teaches the technical skills needed to study a blackhat attack and learn from it. The CD includes examples of network traces, code, system binaries, and logs used by intruders from the blackhat community, collected and used by the Honeynet Project.