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Chapter 7_Computer Network Security Basics

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Chapter 7_Computer Network Security Basics

Uploaded by

gadisa
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Wollega University

Department of Informatics
Data Communication and Computer Networking

April 2016
1
Chapter Seven
Computer Network Security
Basics
2
What is “Security”?
• Dictionary.com says:
1. Freedom from risk or danger; safety.
2. Freedom from doubt, anxiety, or fear; confidence.
3. Something that gives or assures safety, as:
1. A group or department of private guards: Call building security if a visitor
acts suspicious.
2. Measures adopted by a government to prevent espionage, sabotage, or
attack.
3. Measures adopted, as by a business or homeowner, to prevent a crime
such as burglary or assault: Security was lax at the firm's smaller plant.
…etc.
Why do we need “Security”?
•Protect vital information while still allowing
access to those who need it
• Trade secrets, medical records, etc.
•Provide authentication and access control for
resources
• Ex: AFS
•Guarantee availability of resources
• Ex: 5 9’s (99.999% reliability)
Who is vulnerable?
•Financial institutions and banks
•Internet service providers
•Pharmaceutical companies
•Government and defense agencies
•Contractors to various government agencies
•Multinational corporations
•ANYONE ON THE NETWORK
Common Security Attacks & their countermeasures
• Finding a way into the network
Firewalls
• Exploiting software bugs, buffer overflows
Intrusion Detection Systems
• Denial of Service
Ingress filtering, IDS
• TCP hijacking
IPSec
• Packet sniffing
Encryption (SSH, SSL, HTTPS)
• Social problems
Education
Firewall
• Basic problem – many network applications and protocols have security problems
that are fixed over time
 Difficult for users to keep up with changes and keep host secure
 Solution
 Administrators limit access to end hosts by using a firewall
 Firewall is kept up-to-date by administrators
• A firewall is a device (usually a router or a computer) installed between the
internal network of an organization and the rest of the Internet.
 It is designed to forward some packets and filter (not forward) others.
• A firewall is like a castle with a drawbridge
 Only one point of access into the network
 This can be good or bad
Firewall
• Can be hardware or software
 Ex. Some routers come with firewall functionality
 ipfw, ipchains, pf on Unix systems, Windows XP and Mac OS X
have built in firewalls

Internet DMZ
Web server, email
server, web proxy, etc
Firewall

Firewall
Intranet
Intrusion Detection
• Used to monitor for “suspicious activity” on a network
 Can protect against known software exploits, like buffer overflows
• Open Source IDS: Snort, www.snort.org
• Uses “intrusion signatures”
 Well known patterns of behavior
Ping sweeps, port scanning, web server indexing, OS fingerprinting, DoS
attempts, etc.
Denial of Service
• Purpose: Make a network service unusable, usually by
overloading the server or network
• Many different kinds of DoS attacks
 SYN flooding
 SMURF
 Distributed attacks
TCP Attack
• Recall how IP works…
 End hosts create IP packets and routers process them
purely based on destination address alone
• Problem: End hosts may lie about other fields which
do not affect delivery
 Source address – host may trick destination into believing
that the packet is from a trusted source
Especially applications which use IP addresses as a simple authentication
method
Solution – use better authentication methods
Packet Sniffing
• Recall how Ethernet works …
• When someone wants to send a packet to some else …
• They put the bits on the wire with the destination MAC address …
• And remember that other hosts are listening on the wire to detect for
collisions …
• It couldn’t get any easier to figure out what data is being transmitted
over the network!
• This works for wireless too!
• In fact, it works for any broadcast-based medium
Social Problems
• People can be just as dangerous as unprotected computer
systems
 People can be lied to, manipulated, bribed, threatened, harmed,
tortured, etc. to give up valuable information
 Most humans will breakdown once they are at the “harmed” stage,
unless they have been specially trained
Think government here…

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