The Tao of Network Security Monitoring : Beyond Intrusion Detection

Rating:
Summary: Richard succeeded
Review: Being a good reviewer, doesn't mean automatically being a good writer. On the contrary, is so easy criticize and so hard write good books. . .
However against the odds I must admit Richard succeeded in this new role, and wrote a very good book. Perhaps a bit overcharged of dumps. . . but useful and representative ones.
Tired of too much theory and so little practice?. . . then just buy this book and hands at work.
I got dozens of security books (I do my living as security specialist) and am every time more careful when buying or recommending books. This one deserves to be in every specialist shelf.

Rating:
Summary: Beyond Intrusion Detection
Review: Every once in a while you come across a book that really opens your eyes. One that talks in-depth about something completely different. Unfortunately, most technical IT books are rehashes of a bunch of papers and tutorials off the net, and you often wonder whether the time you spent reading the book would have been better spent on google.

The Tao of Network Security Monitoring is not one of these books. It is with great pleasure that I am reviewing what I consider one of the most informative and well written books I have ever come across.

Network Security Monitoring (NSM) is half a science, and half a black art. It requires an in-depth knowledge of packets, protocols, applications, vulnerabilities and black hat tactics. This book focuses on the philosophy behind NSM, the skills required, the tools you need, and the way to set up an effective NSM operation.

The author, Richard Bejtlich, is a former Air Force intelligence officer, and the approach he dictates is almost military in nature. This book covers an introduction to security, what NSM is, how to deploy it, the best tools for the job and the types of things you will see.

I was most impressed by the analysis of normal versus suspicious versus malicious traffic. Since deep packet inspection is one of my hobbies, I am no stranger to reading data off the wire, but I was amazed by the amount of information this man was able to glean by looking at a simple DNS packet !

He explains the differences between full content data (logging everything to the application layer), session data (looking at just the different conversations between hosts), and statistical data. Everything in this book is practical, you can even go to the website and download the same packet traces he uses for explanation and run through them yourself.

This book taught me about a host of new tools, from Argus, to the incredible SGUIL. It taught me a lot of tricks about designing a top notch NSM collection and analysis setup, and more than anything, it introduced me to a completely new mind-set.

In short, this is at present the most enlightening book on my IT bookshelf. I strongly recommend it to anyone who is involved with networks or security. It will be of special interest to the sort of people who get a rush ripping up packets and understanding what happens below the surface. It also goes really well with firewall.cx, since most of the protocols talked about are explained here in detail.

If there is one disappointment, it's the absence of an included CD-ROM containing tools, or perhaps a live FreeBSD CD (Freebie) like the one he introduces in the book.

This one gets a scorching 5/5. Get it now, and open your mind !

Rating:
Summary: Richard Bejtlich has done an excellent job with this book
Review: I'm going to keep this review short as others have already gone into sufficient depth. I'm a security professional (over ten years), and the title of this review sums up my opinion. Richard Bejtlich has produced a book that you should own if:
1. You're a network administrator
2. A security professional (or entering this field)
3. Remotely interested in network security, particularly monitoring
4. A student in any IT related field
5. Any or all of the above
Prevention (hardening) is important, but network monitoring and intrusion detection an absolute imperative. On this subject, this book is on-target, concise, accurate, and extremely useful for its intended audience. That, I think, is high praise for any technical book and this book certainly deserves it.

Rating:
Summary: Advanced Security teachings
Review: I'm not sure why, but my first review of this book was not posted. However, I feel that this book definitely warrants a second attempt. The Tao of Network Security is a definite must have for anyone serious about the field of network security. While the book is heavily BSD biased, the tools illustrated throughout the book are free and can be compiled on just about any platform. The author draws from his years of experience as a network security analyst for the Air Force and work as a forensic analyst for various network security operations. The author goes through various scenarios demonstrating different techniques for Intrusion detection using Open Source tools. He introduces Squil, a very robust front-end for Snort that is designed with the Security Analyst in mind. The author brings forth some very interesting points of view based on experience in network security. While the book is rather large, somewhere over 700 pages including the appendices, I found that all the information in the book is worthwhile and relevant.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent addition to your network security bookshelf...
Review: If you want to take your network security monitoring to the next level, check out The Tao Of Network Security Monitoring by Richard Bejtlich. It does a good job covering new ground.

Chapter list: The Security Process; What Is Network Security Monitoring?; Deployment Considerations; The Reference Intrusion Model; Full Content Data; Additional Data Analysis; Session Data; Statistical Data; Alert Data: Bro and Prelude; Alert Data: NSM Using Sguil; Best Practices; Case Studies For Managers; Analyst Training Program; Discovering DSN; Harnessing The Power Of Session Data; Packet Monkey Heaven; Tools For Attacking Network Security Monitoring; Tactics For Attacking Network Security Monitoring; The Future Of Network Security Monitoring; Protocol Header Reference; Intellectual History Of Network Security Monitoring; Protocol Anomaly Detection; Index

A sign of a good book is when the author sets out their scope and target audience, and then doesn't stray from it. Bejtlich doesn't try to teach the reader every last thing about every package he can include. Rather, he defines the scope as open source monitoring tools that haven't been written about ad nauseam. Furthermore, there's no wasted space covering installation instructions. He figures you can read the documentation for that. So what you get is meaty information on how to conduct network security monitoring (NSM) using the different packages that are available.

Another nice portion of the book includes the case studies and the analyst training. This not only entertaining reading, but it also bridges the gap between just knowing about the subject to being able to practice those skills as part of your occupation. Very nice feature...

An excellent addition to your network security bookshelf...

Rating:
Summary: Finally.....an answer.
Review: It's tough to keep up with the many facets of network security.
Many of the well respected published books in the past
have done excellent jobs in introducing many concepts but
I have always had to walk away from the book with questions
that required extensive research beyond the scope of the book.

Richard Bejtlich has written a book that fills in all the holes
left by the other authors. The numerous pages (that's right,
numerous, not 2 pages) of analysis that identify the
differences of normal to suspicious to malicious network
activity is a small portion of a huge collection that thoroughly
covers the world of network security.

I recommend the Tao of NSM to anyone who needs answers
to the following...

how do I...?, with what tool?, what approach should I take?,
what do I do next?, where else can I find info on .....?

If your responsible for the security of your network this
book needs to be on your desk....leave the rest on the
shelf for reference.

Rating:
Summary: An excellent and comprehensive security book
Review: Richard Bejtlich hits one out of the park with this terrific book. In one stroke, he moves the art and science of intrusion detection out of the little leagues and into the majors. If you've already run through articles and books with advice like "just load SNORT and start tuning", this book will shift you to an all-star level in which thousands of machines across enterprise networks can be monitored and protected.

Network security monitoring (NSM) is the discipline of collecting and interpreting detailed network traffic to find and foil attackers. Although it may seem like Intrusion Detection (and IDSs), the relationship between IDSs and NSM is like that between Bonzo the chimp and King Kong. Almost anybody could handle a chimp for a few hours - or you'd think so from watching the movies - but bringing King Kong into your neighborhood means you really have to know what you're doing. He'll take a lot of feeding and special care. On the other hand, he does much more than Bonzo can to protect your assets. Network security monitoring is the King Kong of intrusion detection techniques.

The author presents detailed information on a large variety of network traffic capture and analysis tools, techniques, and topologies. Nearly all are public domain and open source. The few exceptions are tools specialized for industry-dominating Cisco and its proprietary formats and protocols. A few hours on the Internet with this book in hand can give you just about all the tools needed to follow his examples and to build your own network security monitoring environment.

Basic network activity capture is addressed through packages like the fundamental libpcap libraries, and the tools Tcpdump, Tethereal, Ethereal, and Snort (in its packet-capture mode). Tools for converting, combining, and subsetting captured data receive equal attention, with working examples based on editcap, mergecap, tcpslice, the Berkeley packet filter (BPF) language, tcpflow, ngrep and others. GUI tools are touched on as well, including EtherApe and NetDude. For the more advanced topic of session data or "flow" capture (using the Cisco NetFlow data format), there are equally-detailed discussions of the Flow-Tools package, the Argus analysis tools, tcptrace, and others.

Statistical reporting and analysis gets a chapter, while alert processing (the classic IDS functions of Snort) get two, covering Bro, Prelude, and Sguil. (Although the book mentions Snort briefly, it assumes you have access to sufficient information to load and use Snort without assistance.) Much of the remainder of the book addresses the practical issues of installing, operating, and administering network security monitoring in the environment of an enterprise or Internet service provider.

It's refreshing that the software tools are not just mentioned, they are shown in operation in several scenarios each. The reader can see why they are important to the craft of network security monitoring, and can follow the examples on their own computer once the tools are installed. The author's style is not quite a tutorial, but it's easy to learn from him.

Most striking, perhaps, is the author's focus on completely professional installation and operation of this sensitive security function. He talks about network topologies and their effect on sensor placement. He provides alternative designs for the collection of data and for its analysis, usually on separate workstations. His stated experience is on large and very busy networks, so he addresses some difficult techniques (such as merging data from separate sensors to simulate a real-time data flow on a single machine) that are valuable and often mandatory in distributed enterprises. At the same time, his advice supports smaller networks and more limited security goals - you just have to pick and choose the items you need from the very large smorgasbord he presents.

So impressive is the technical detail, you could forgive it for being less than polished. But the writer is not just competent, he is entertaining and enjoyable to read. Between Bejtlich's skills and those of the editors, this book has no bizarre jumps of topic, no dead space, none of the clanging infelicities and groaners that haunt most of the technical books we read each month.

We should be clear about this book's audience: it is not an executive overview or a manager's guide. This is a manual for practitioners. It is pitched toward those who are comfortable purging a desktop machine and converting it into a single-purpose network sensor, those who can download source code and compile tools in multiple operating systems, those who will find it worthwhile to put their hands on and their hearts into a challenging and open-ended endeavor. But for those whom it suits, this will be an indispensable guide, the complete play-book of a fascinating new security specialty.

Rating:
Summary: Beyond Intrusion Detection.....a very fitting title
Review: Richard has done an excellent job on writing the Tao. The book is written in a very clear and easy to understand way.

The Tao picks up where most IDS books leave off. This is not a book for learning the basics and the author points that out upfront and recommends other books to be read as a foundation for his book. It is very obvious the author has great experience in dealing with real intrusions and is not just rehasing the same old how to detect a buffer overflow material. This experiece is what shapes the princples and goals of NSM...when the IDS alerts what do you do next?...when prevention has failed what do you do next?

The book groups the information well. How to setup Network Security Monitoring (NSM) not just installing an IDS. He covers how to use different tools for doing NSM. Then some of my favorite parts are the actual case studies and applying NSM techniques in each of those cases.

The author is one of the leaders in this field and shares much of that in this book. 5 stars!!!

Rating:
Summary: Awesome!
Review: This book rocks.

Bejtlich knows his stuff.

This is a great book that gives you tons of information that you won't find elsewhere.

Rating:
Summary: Great book - covers topic in detail
Review: This is a great book. With most geek books, I browse and grab what I need. With this one, I even read the apendices!

At first, the author's tone put me off. He spends the introductory chapters talking about the "Way" of Network Security Monitoring, (capitalized) and how it's much better than other approaches. It felt a little like, "My Burping Crane Kung-Fu will defeat your Shining Fist techniques!" I really didn't see much difference between what he was talking about and other approaches. I admit to being much newer to this discipline than the author, and he has an impressive appendix on the intellectual history of intrusion detection (uncapitalized). So it may be that the lessons he advocates have already been internalized; my exposure may have been to a field that has already moved up to his standard. But I have a hard time imagining that intrusion analysts have ever been satisfied with a single approach with no correlation. As I understand what he means by upper-case NSM, it's basically the efficient use of multiple techniques to detect intrusions. I can't see trying to argue the contrary position.

Ah, but then we get to the good stuff. He goes through the major types of indicators and the means of reviewing them. He covers the use of a number of important tools, but doesn't rehash what is better covered elsewhere. For example, he doesn't bother covering Snort, because there are plenty of books on Snort already. If you are reading the book, it's almost a certainty that you are familiar with Snort. Good call to skip over that. Instead, he covers some other tools that might be useful in the same area. He also refers to tons of other books. I made a lengthy wish-list based on his recommendations and they've been good. (He also reviews exhaustively here on Amazon). So this book is like the first stone in an avalanche- it triggers the acquisition of many other books.

The book provided many 'light bulb' moments. For example, he talks about giving up on source-based focus. In a world where a DDoS attack is currently using 23,000 separate bots, we may exhaust our resources tracking low-value drones. So focus on the targets they are after: light-bulb! In spite of my earlier resistance, I was soon going through it as eagerly as I did with the Patrick O'Brian Aubrey/Maturin novels. It's fun to read such clear, authoritative writing.

One quibble - he trashes the SANS intrusion detection course, which I took and thought was terrific. He has taught the class, and considered the course material out of date. Maybe they have updated, but his book didn't contradict anything in the course as I took it 1.5 years ago.