Penetration Testing: RE: TCP/IP skills

["Eric McCarty" <eric () lawmpd com>]

Ok, I'll play Devil's Advocate on this one. Do you really need to know how TCP/IP works? Lets be honest here, Server A 
starts rebooting with lsass errors, hit up google and there you go. A mysterious FTP Server appears showing a banner of 
"This Distro br0ught 2 u by ___", do u need to know TCP/IP to fix/mitigate this issue?. Diagnosing a problem? the ICMP 
tools suite used to be the tools of the trade but with so many routers/firewalls dropping ICMP now its hard to call it 
a reliable diagnosis tool. How many websites won't respond to a ping but will fire up in mozilla just fine?. 

A lot of Info Sec or IT People don't know about SYN's, ACK's, FIN's, RSET's or even what packets are, why?, because 
they don't need to know to accomplish their job. So is it that there is lack of education as a downfall of IT Laziness 
or due to technological advancements in tools making this education unnecessary for so called Info Sec Pro's?. 

To put this into perspective, do you need to know about Stoichometric Ratios to change spark plugs?, nope. Do you need 
to know how electricity works to operate a power drill?, nope. 

If I'm off base let me know, and as I don my flame suit I will say that you will never find me without a book nearby 
and I believe firmly in education, IT or otherwise.

Eric McCarty


-----Original Message-----
From: Don Parker [mailto:dparker () rigelksecurity com]
Sent: Tuesday, July 06, 2004 6:21 PM
To: pen-test () securityfocus com; vuln-dev () securityfocus com
Subject: TCP/IP skills


Hello all, I just wanted to comment on what I see as a rather alarming trend in the 
security industry today. More and more many are becoming reliant upon tools to do their 
job whilst they ignore core components of their skillset. Specifically in this case an 
in-depth knowledge of TCP/IP. 

Knowing TCP/IP at a granular level in my opinion is very much a core skill that must be 
attained by anyone who wishes to have a successful career in the network security 
industry today. One cannot become adept by simply using tools, and never knowing how to 
interpret the output by verifying the packets themselves. 

It constantly amazes me when I teach a TCP/IP Analysis course that people who are 
presently in the industy do not know of such basic TCP/IP concepts as the 3 way 
handshake and how ICMP works. That or being able to wholly dissect a packet and explain 
the relationships between various metrics. 

I would be curious to hear of your opinions on this?

Cheers,

Don

-------------------------------------------
Don Parker, GCIA
Intrusion Detection Specialist
Rigel Kent Security & Advisory Services Inc
www.rigelksecurity.com
ph :613.233.HACK
fax:613.233.1788
toll: 1-877-777-H8CK
--------------------------------------------