Network Forensics: Tracking Hackers through Cyberspace

“This is a must-have work for anybody in information security, digital forensics, or involved with incident handling. As we move away from traditional disk-based analysis into the interconnectivity of the cloud, Sherri and Jonathan have created a framework and roadmap that will act as a seminal work in this developing field.”

– Dr. Craig S. Wright (GSE), Asia Pacific Director at Global Institute for Cyber Security + Research.

“It’s like a symphony meeting an encyclopedia meeting a spy novel.”

–Michael Ford, Corero Network Security

On the Internet, every action leaves a mark–in routers, firewalls, web proxies, and within network traffic itself. When a hacker breaks into a bank, or an insider smuggles secrets to a competitor, evidence of the crime is always left behind.

Learn to recognize hackers’ tracks and uncover network-based evidence in Network Forensics: Tracking Hackers through Cyberspace. Carve suspicious email attachments from packet captures. Use flow records to track an intruder as he pivots through the network. Analyze a real-world wireless encryption-cracking attack (and then crack the key yourself). Reconstruct a suspect’s web surfing history–and cached web pages, too–from a web proxy. Uncover DNS-tunneled traffic. Dissect the Operation Aurora exploit, caught on the wire.

Throughout the text, step-by-step case studies guide you through the analysis of network-based evidence. You can download the evidence files from the authors’ web site (lmgsecurity.com), and follow along to gain hands-on experience.

Hackers leave footprints all across the Internet. Can you find their tracks and solve the case? Pick up Network Forensicsand find out.

Table of Contents

Part I: Foundation
Chapter 1 Practical Investigative Strategies
Chapter 2 Technical Fundamentals
Chapter 3 Evidence Acquisition

Part II: Traffic Analysis
Chapter 4 Packet Analysis
Chapter 5 Statistical Flow Analysis
Chapter 6 Wireless: Network Forensics Unplugged
Chapter 7 Network Intrusion Detection and Analysis

Part III: Network Devices and Servers
Chapter 8 Event Log Aggregation, Correlation, and Analysis
Chapter 9 Switches, Routers, and Firewalls
Chapter 10 Web Proxies

Part IV: Advanced Topics
Chapter 11 Network Tunneling
Chapter 12 Malware Forensics