Nessus, Snort, and Ethereal Power Tools: Customizing Open Source Security Applications

Brian Caswell · Jay Beale · Gilbert Ramirez · Noam Rathaus

Sep 2005 · Elsevier

About this ebook

Nessus, Snort, and Ethereal Power Tools covers customizing Snort to perform intrusion detection and prevention; Nessus to analyze the network layer for vulnerabilities; and Ethereal to sniff their network for malicious or unusual traffic. The book contains an appendix detailing the best of the rest open source security tools. Each of these tools is intentionally designed to be highly customizable so that users can torque the programs to suit their particular needs. Users can code their own custom rules, plug-ins, and filters that are tailor-made to fit their own networks and the threats which they most commonly face. The book describes the most important concepts of coding and customizing tools, and then provides readers with invaluable working scripts that can either be used as is or further refined by using knowledge gained from the book.

• Snort, Nessus, and Ethereal are the three most popular open source security tools in the world
• Only book that teaches readers how to customize these tools for their specific needs by coding rules, plugins, and filters
• Companion Web site provides all working code and scripts from the book for download

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About the author

Noam Rathaus is the co-founder and CTO of Beyond Security, a company specializing in the development of enterprise-wide security assessment technologies, vulnerability assessment-based SOCs (security operation centers) and related products. He holds an electrical engineering degree from Ben Gurion University, and has been checking the security of computer systems from the age of 13. Noam is also the editor-in-chief of SecuriTeam.com, one of the largest vulnerability databases and security portals on the Internet. He has contributed to several security-related open-source projects including an active role in the Nessus security scanner project. He has written over 150 security tests to the open source tool's vulnerability database, and also developed the first Nessus client for the Windows operating system. Noam is apparently on the hit list of several software giants after being responsible for uncovering security holes in products by vendors such as Microsoft, Macromedia, Trend Micro, and Palm. This keeps him on the run using his Nacra Catamaran, capable of speeds exceeding 14 knots for a quick getaway.