Silence on the Wire: A Field Guide to Passive Reconnaissance and Indirect Attacks

by Michal Zalewski and Dina Nayeri

There are many ways that a potential attacker can intercept information, or learnmore about the sender, as the information travels over a network. Silence on the Wireuncovers these silent attacks so that system administrators can defend against them, as well as better understand and monitor their systems.

Silence on the Wire dissects several unique and fascinating security andprivacy problems associated with the technologies and...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1593270461
• ISBN13: 9781593270469
• Release Date: April 2005
• Publisher: Penguin Random House LLC (No Starch)
• Length: 281 Pages
• Weight: 1.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 7.1" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

A Wonderful Treatment of Network Security

At a conference I was at some time ago, a fellow mentioned to me that one person he would probably not want to play poker with is Michal Zalewski. I didn't really get his statement at the time, but after reading this book, I can now wholeheartedly understand his reluctance. Although only 260 pages long, Michal's book covers an incredibly wide range of topics, pinpointing numerous areas in which incredible amounts of information about you and your computer are available, even though it may not seem that way at first blush. From the keyboard, to the processor, to the operating system, to the network wire, Michal points out the many holes from which this information is leaking from. His writing style gives rise to an entertaining narrative where a high-level picture makes the main concept available to everyone, while at the same time providing citations in the footnotes that let you delve into the details at a later point. Silence on the Wire impressed me in so many ways that it's difficult to list them all here. Michal's understanding of so many areas in computer security is simply astounding. He covers each topic in just enough detail, not bogging down the reader in lots of technical jargon, but also not doing an inordinate amount of 'hand-waving'. His movement through the various components of the computer and the network is very well done; it ties together in a nice progression that the reader can follow easily. I enjoyed the a nice selection of papers Michal discusses in which many ingenious attacks were described (timing attacks on RSA, SSH password recovery through timing analysis, TEMPEST, etc.). But one thing that truly stood out in this book is Michal's own contribution, which includes his work with p0f, the analysis of various ISN generators, and his work on identifying various web browsers through timing analysis. I was just amazed at how easily Michal pulled these 'fingerprints' out of seemingly random and/or innocuous data sets. I had actually read about much of the work that Silence on the Wire covers beforehand, but in spite of that I learned a great deal from this book, and I know that many others can too. If you only read one book on network security, make it this one!

Ages well

This is one of the few information security books that seem to age well: I reread it after over a year, and it still appears to be quite refreshing and up to date. This only goes to show the difference between books written out of genuine passion, and the rest. Big kudos to the author.

The best (most unique, most interesting) security book I've read, period.

I have an extensive library of computer security books, and this is by far the most interesting, most novel, most entertaining computer security book I own. I am actually going through each of the footnotes, reading every paper mentioned in the book. This books is not a textbook for system cracking or defending your system, like O'Reilly's Practical Unix and Internet Security (my second favorite security book). Instead Zalewski has gone somewhere entirely new, showing how your computer leaks information to other parties without 99.999% of the population realizing it. I do network security for a living, am a privacy fanatic, and figured I'd learn a few new things. I was overwhelmed by the amount of new information I learned. Reading this book was a humbling yet exhilirating experience. Some of the sections are written so clearly a lay person could understand them, but other sections assume a great deal of knowledge of computer lore, particularly TCP/IP networking. Buy this book, then run silent, run deep.

This One Goes On The Short List of

Excellent! Zalewski's book is packed with information. The level of detail and technical difficulty of a lot of the information seem to make the book geared more toward those already familiar with computer security and information warfare rather than security novices. Those who are familiar with computer and network security may feel that parts of the book are too basic or beneath the level they are looking for, but Zalewski generally has a goal in mind and is just laying the groundwork to build up to it. Most people in computer security, and even home users with little understanding of network security, are familiar with the major types of overt attacks (viruses, worms, phishing scams, spyware, etc.) and the countermeasures to protect their systems (antivirus, antispyware, firewalls, IDS, etc.), but this book uncovers the ominous volumes of data that can be extracted and exploited using passive reconnaissance techniques. The book is called a "Field Guide" in the subtitle and it reads more or less like one. It provides the information and details you need in the trenches to wage an effective war against information insecurity. This is one that I would dub a "must read" for anyone working directly with network security. [...]

Deep and penetrating look at security

Irrespective of the myriad proclamations of systems or products being hackerproof, bulletproof and the like; given enough time and money, everything is breakable. Security purists may argue that one-time pads are provably and perfectly secure. While that is correct in the pristine halls of academic cryptography, the real world is littered with many one-time pads of dubious security. The fact that everything is breakable from an information security perspective is good news to Luddites and bad news for the paranoid. Hopefully, most people fall between those two opposites and with that, Silence on the Wire: A Field Guide to Passive Reconnaissance and Indirect Attacks is an fascinating book on knowing when to be suspicious and when to be complacent. The premise of the book is that there are countless ways that a potential attacker can intercept information and sniff data. The title points out that these silent stealth-like attacks are often difficult to detect, and all the more so to defend against. The better you understand the threats, the better you can monitor and defend against them. The author writes about his work with data reconnaissance and details how computers and networks operate, with a special emphasis on how they process and transmit data. With such transmissions, there are significant security threats; which is what this book details. Make note that this is not a For Dummies type of book. It is written for security engineers and experienced system administrators that have a heavy background in networking and security. Electronic engineers will feel very much at home with the many schematics and encodings in the code. The book is written for those that are very comfortable with programming and complex networks. The books 260 pages contain four parts and 18 chapters. Part one details the long journey that a keystroke takes. Between the keyboard and the ultimate destination of the data, there are myriad ways the data can be misappropriated. These include traditional attacks, in addition to protocol attacks and problems with the CPU. Part 2 details how data is transmitted and the various avenues of attack that can be launched against the data. Note that the subtitle of the book is a field guide to passive reconnaissance and indirect attacks. The book is all about the passive types of attacks that are often quite prevalent, yet overlooked. In the section The Art of Transmitting Data, the author details the electronic mechanisms on how data traverses a network and the avenues of attacks. One of the easiest attacks is the monitoring of modem or router lights. With the proper analysis and deduction, an attacker can surmise a significant amount about the nature of the traffic. Part 2 closes with an interesting overview of how to provide better security to switched Ethernet networks. The author notes that that Ethernet networks don't provide a universal and easy way to ensure the integrity and confidentiality (two pillars of secu