Skip to Content
Network Security Assessment
book

Network Security Assessment

by Chris McNab
March 2004
Intermediate to advanced
396 pages
11h
English
O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Content preview from Network Security Assessment

Chapter 11. Assessing IP VPN Services

This chapter tackles assessment of services found running on network boundaries that provide secure remote access over IP. Increasingly, VPN services provide access for both home users and branch offices, using IPsec, proprietary Check Point FWZ, or Microsoft PPTP. These services are under threat primarily from offline preshared key-grinding and information-leak attack, which are described in the following sections.

IPsec VPNs

VPN technologies and their underlying protocols and key exchange mechanisms fill entire books already. One excellent book I used to research and present IPsec key exchange and authentication protocols is IPSec: Securing VPNs, by Carlton R. Davis (McGraw-Hill). If you require detailed low-level information about IPsec and its various modes and protocols, you should definitely read a book dedicated to the subject. Here I tackle the key protocols and mechanisms at a high level, and discuss known remotely exploitable weaknesses and attacks.

Standard Internet (IP) packets are inherently insecure. IPsec was developed to provide security options and enhancements to IP and to negate the following security weaknesses:

  • IP spoofing and packet-source forgery issues

  • Modification of data within IP packets

  • Replay attacks

  • Sniffing attacks

IPsec VPNs use the Internet Security Association and Key Management Protocol (ISAKMP) service to provide authentication and key exchange when establishing and maintaining an IPsec connection. After authenticating, ...

Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.

Read now

Unlock full access

More than 5,000 organizations count on O’Reilly

AirBnbBlueOriginElectronic ArtsHomeDepotNasdaqRakutenTata Consultancy Services

QuotationMarkO’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.
Julian F.
Head of Cybersecurity
QuotationMarkI wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.
Addison B.
Field Engineer
QuotationMarkI’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.
Amir M.
Data Platform Tech Lead
QuotationMarkI'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.
Mark W.
Embedded Software Engineer

You might also like

Network Security Strategies

Network Security Strategies

Aditya Mukherjee
CCNA Cyber Ops SECFND #210-250 Official Cert Guide

CCNA Cyber Ops SECFND #210-250 Official Cert Guide

Omar Santos, Joseph Muniz, Stefano De Crescenzo

Publisher Resources

ISBN: 059600611XErrata Page