Security Management (Essay Sample)

Security Name Date Course Table of Contents TOC \o "1-3" \h \z \u Password audits: PAGEREF _Toc165384231 \h 2John the Ripper PAGEREF _Toc165384232 \h 2Hashcat PAGEREF _Toc165384233 \h 2Packet Sniffer PAGEREF _Toc165384234 \h 3Tcpdump PAGEREF _Toc165384235 \h 4Vulnerability Scanners PAGEREF _Toc165384236 \h 4Nessus Essentials PAGEREF _Toc165384237 \h 4OWASP ZAP PAGEREF _Toc165384238 \h 5Tracing and Information Gathering PAGEREF _Toc165384239 \h 6Maltego PAGEREF _Toc165384240 \h 6Shodan PAGEREF _Toc165384241 \h 7Engaging PAGEREF _Toc165384242 \h 8Volatility PAGEREF _Toc165384243 \h 8Steganography and Cryptography PAGEREF _Toc165384244 \h 9GnuPG PAGEREF _Toc165384245 \h 9Steghide PAGEREF _Toc165384246 \h 10Methodology PAGEREF _Toc165384247 \h 11Tool Selection Criteria PAGEREF _Toc165384248 \h 11Background and Literature Review: PAGEREF _Toc165384249 \h 11Personalization and Customization: PAGEREF _Toc165384250 \h 11Detailed Analysis and Description: PAGEREF _Toc165384251 \h 11Effectiveness and Weaknesses of the Program: PAGEREF _Toc165384252 \h 11Ethical Considerations: PAGEREF _Toc165384253 \h 12References PAGEREF _Toc165384254 \h 13 Password audits: John the Ripper What is it? John the Ripper is one of the most popular password cracking software for auditing the strength of passwords and recovering lost passwords. Capabilities: It can crack a password by performing brute force, dictionary, and rainbow table attacks. Usage: Security specialists and penetration testers use it to rate the strength of passwords and identify weak passwords in systems. Hashcat What is it? Hashcat is one more powerful password-cracking tool known for its speed and versatility in cracking different types of hashes (Tavares, 2020). Capabilities: It is a different kind of attack algorithm that supports various attack modes, such as brute-force, dictionary, and mask attacks. Therefore, it is efficient in cracking a password. Usage: Similar to John the Ripper, Hashcat is also employed in auditing password strength and recovering lost passwords. Packet Sniffer What is it? Wireshark is the most popular open-source packet sniffer and network protocol analyzer for network troubleshooting, analysis, and security auditing. Capabilities: Sniff and interactively browse in real time the traffic running on a computer network; summarize and display it in a human-readable form. Usage: The tool is used by network administrators, security professionals, and developers for traffic analysis, network troubleshooting, and security incident investigation. Tcpdump What is Tcpdump? Tcpdump is a command-line packet-analyzer tool that captures and shows real-time packets flowing across a network. Capabilities: It provides a powerful command-line interface for capturing and analyzing network packets, making it suitable for performing tasks in scripts and automatic procedures. Usage: This tool is easily usable in Unix-like operating systems for network debugging, packet capturing, and network security. Vulnerability Scanners Nessus Essentials What is it? Nessus Essentials is a powerful vulnerability scanner that helps to identify security vulnerabilities within systems and applications in a powerful, comprehensive manner (Awati, n.d.). Capabilities: It performs vulnerability scanning, malware detection, configuration audit, and compliance checks across multiple platforms. Usage: Nessus helps security professionals and system administrators discover prioritizer abilities to prevent exploitation. OWASP ZAP What is it? OWASP ZAP is an open-source web application security scanner commonly used worldwide to find security vulnerabilities within web applications. Capabilities: It identifies several flavours of vulnerabilities, including SQL injection, cross-site scripting, and broken authentication. Use: Developers, security testers, and organizations utilize OWASP ZAP to identify and remediate security flaws in web applications within development and testing activities. Tracing and Information Gathering Maltego What is Maltego? Maltego is a powerful open-source intelligence and forensics application that collects and analyses target information. Capabilities: It can show the relationship of data, perform link analysis, and even mine for information from various online sources to produce comprehensive intelligence reports. Use: Maltego is used from the user standpoint by investigators, intelligence analysts, and information security experts for intelligence gathering, social engineering assessment, and network footprinting. Shodan What is it? Shodan is a search engine that finds Internet-connected devices, including information valuable for surveying and identifying a possible attack vector. Capabilities: It can search the web for a specific device, service, or flaw in an indexed data database from various sources, including IoT devices, servers, and industrial control systems. Usage: Shodan is used by information security researchers, pen testers, and hackers to determine what devices have been exposed, evaluate their security posture, and identify targets for potential attacks. Engaging What is it? Autopsy is free and open-source software used in digital forensics and analysis to analyze disk images, files, and investigations. Capabilities: The GUI-based environment can perform disk imaging analysis, artefact extraction, deleted file recovery, and reporting features. Applications: Digital forensic examiners, law enforcement agencies, and incident responders utilize this tool during autopsies to investigate cybercrimes, data breaches, and system intrusions. Volatility What is it? Volatility is a memory forensics framework that extracts and analyzes volatile memory (RAM) artefacts from forensic images. Capabilities: Analyzes memory dumps, thereby pulling out process information, network connections, and sometimes even evidence of malicious activity from volatile memory. Usage: Forensic analysts, incident responders, and malware researchers use the volatility tool to conduct memory forensics and deduce behavioural insights into compromised systems. Steganography and Cryptography GnuPG What is it? GnuPG is a free implementation of the OpenPGP standard, which is used to sign and encrypt data, guaranteeing confidentiality and integrity. Capabilities: The software creates key pairs, encrypts and decrypts files, and signs messages to secure secret information using public-key cryptography. Usage: This protects communication, user identity, and data privacy by individual users, organizations, and developers. Steghide What is it? Steghide is a steganography tool that hides data within other types of files, such as images or audio files, to cover up sensitive information. Features: The tool can steganographically hide data in digital media files and later extract that embedded data by applying cryptographic techniques appropriate for covert communication and data concealment. Steghide is used by security professionals, researchers, and other individual users to hide sensitive informati...