Intranet Security: Stories from the Trenches - Softcover

McCarthy, Linda

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0138947597 ISBN 13: 9780138947590

Publisher: Prentice Hall Ptr, 1997

Synopsis

Illustrates security flaws that make corporate intranets easy targets for hackers with true stories of network administrators tracking intrusions and struggling with security problems. Each chapter details a real-world case and offers advice to prevent that particular situation. Includes a glossary, acronyms, and lists of vendors and organizations. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

About this title

About the Author

LINDA McCARTHY has broken into thousands of systems on corporate intranets to demonstrate how easily an intruder could shut down executive networks, kill manufacturing processes, or even crash world-wide computer operations. She provides consultative services to executive managers to help them understand the levels of risk on their networks. Linda has also taught courses in hardware architecture, system administration, and UNIX security. She currently leads a global security research and development team at Sun Microsystems, Inc.

From the Back Cover

Security consultant Linda McCarthy shows:

• How breaches occurred
• What steps were taken to deal with them-and how well they worked
• What steps could have been taken to prevent the crisis

There's nothing academic about network security when it's late at night and some hacker is rummaging through your R&D files. If you don't want that 3 a.m. phone call, and you don't want your company's strategic plans in tomorrow's Wall Street Journal, now's the time to prevent it from happening to you.

In this book, you'll watch as real network administrators track hacker intrusions. You'll see firsth and how companies struggle with security problems caused by poor training, lack of management support, hidden agendas, and careless intranet development. You'll find checklists of preventive security measures you can take right now-and lists of tools that can help. Above all, you'll find insight into the all-too-human security flaws that make corporate intranets an easy target for hackers.

"Linda McCarthy's book not only blends statistics with real life stories to good effect, but discusses and documents crucial items such as the importance of a security policy, the impact of organizational politics, and actual transcripts of break-ins. Read the book-it will help you understand security in the real world. And when all is said and done, that's saying a lot, isn't it?" --Dan Farmer, Security Researcher

"In addition to accurate and scary war stories, this book is chock-full of practical advice that anyone can benefit from." --Marcus J. Ranum, CEO, Network Flight Recorder

From the Inside Flap

Introduction

The age of connectivity is definitely upon us. With information flowing freely in and from all directions and electronic commerce knocking down new doors, network security has come to include a lot more than just using a good firewall to connect to the Internet.

I've spent a lot of time auditing security on distributed networks. In many cases, I found that data could be easily modified, stolen, or destroyed without a trace that the incident ever occurred. The system administrators and other powers-that-were knew that the systems weren't configured for security. What they didn't know was just how high their level of risk was. Executive managers were equally unaware of the risks.

This book lets you learn from their mistakes. If you are an executive manager, manager, system administrator—or anyone responsible for Intranet security—you must take an active approach to security. Don't make the same mistakes these companies did. It could cost you your company.

About this Book

WHAT you are about to read is NOT a work of fiction. This is a collection of REAL security audits. Each chapter focuses on an audit that I actually conducted (in person!) for a real, live, functioning company. If I'd used the actual company names, you would probably recognize that you'd personally done business with some of them.

Of course, I didn't use the real names of the companies, employees, or other parties for obvious legal and ethical reasons. But I did use the real facts regarding risk and my audit approach in each case. Read closely, especially if you are an executive manager, line-level manager, system administrator, lawyer, or law enforcement professional. The risks described are risks that you NEED to understand.
As a side note, most of the audits I describe in this book were conducted on UNIX systems. Some people, including some security people who should know better, believe that UNIX is inherently more susceptible to security problems than newer platforms like Windows NT. Don't buy it. The truth is that UNIX security is much better understood because it has been pounded on for about 20 years. In newer operating systems, the holes haven't been fully discovered and exploited. Industry experts are now saying that NT configurations may be equally or more vulnerable.
In any case, the real risks are not only built-in to the operating systems. Serious risks lie in the way systems are installed, configured, supported, and managed. It is those factors that most determine the risk to your company.
In pointing out these risks, I'm hoping that the people responsible for data on networks start taking an active and serious approach to security.

How this Book Is Organized
Even though these audits are real, I begin each chapter with a fictional scenario written in first person. In my corporate work, I've found that a lot of people start to take security seriously only when something happens to their systems, their data, and their company—just one of many respects in which the “Me” decade never really ended. I personalize each scenario by placing you, the reader, into the story to transfer the message that this really could happen to your data and your company.
The bulk of each chapter describes the actual security risks that I uncovered during the audit. This section also explains how those risks came to be. You don't just wake up one morning to find that your network security has gone AWOL. Security breaches usually occur by omission or poor planning executed over long periods of time. These sections explain some ways that can happen.
The last section of each chapter, “Let's Not Go There...,” tells you how to avoid the problems in the first place. My hope is that you will read those sections carefully and take the guidelines to heart.
About Hackers
Throughout this book, I use the term “hacker” to mean someone who gains unauthorized access to systems and information. Some experts use the term “cracker” instead, noting that some programmers like to call themselves “hackers” when in fact they are really expert coders and not inclined to criminal activity. I decided to use “hacker” instead, because its use is widespread outside security circles and nearly anyone likely to pick up this book would know what I meant by it. I've also referred to “the hacker” as “he” in most cases. We all know that a hacker can be male or female, but it's annoying to read “he or she” over and over again.
Finally, this book is about hackers—not for them. If you are a wanna-be hacker, you will not learn how to break into systems from this book. You might as well put it back on the shelf now.

Edition details

• Publisher: Prentice Hall Ptr
• Publication date: 1997
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0138947597
• ISBN 13: 9780138947590
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 260