Gunter Ollman, Professional Services Director, NGS, has written a very informative white paper on Stopping Automated Attack Tools. The following is an abstract of the paper.

An almost infinite array of automated tools exist to spider and mirror application content, extract confidential material, brute force guess authentication credentials, discover code-injection flaws, fuzz application variables for exploitable overflows, scan for common files or vulnerable CGI's, and generally attack or exploit web-based application flaws. While of great value to security professionals, the use of these tools by attackers represents a clear and present danger to all organisations. These automated tools have become increasingly popular for attackers seeking to compromise the integrity of online applications, and are used during most phases of an attack. Whilst there are a number of defence techniques which, when incorporated into a web-based application, are capable of stopping even the latest generation of tools, unfortunately most organisations have failed to adopt them. This whitepaper examines techniques which are capable of defending an application against these tools; providing advice on their particular strengths and weaknesses and proposing solutions capable of stopping the next generation of automated attack tools.

Copyright © April 2005, Gunter Ollman. All rights reserved worldwide.