A Bootable Network Security Toolkit

No doubt, you already have a network security toolkit, and that toolkit probably changes as your network environment changes. One item that you might want to consider adding to your toolkit is the Network Security Toolkit (NST), which is a project developed and maintained by Ron Henderson and Paul Blankenbaker. The NST is available as a bootable CD-ROM or an International Organization for Standardization (ISO) downloadable im-age. It contains a variety of popular security tools, some of which you might already use and some of which you might not yet know about.

When you reboot a system with the NST CD-ROM loaded, a trimmed-down version of Redhat Linux 9 opens. After the OS is running, you can access the tools on the CD-ROM through the local console, through a serial connection, via the network from another system, or through a Web browser.

The tools included with NST are for the most part taken from a list of security tools that a group of security professionals voted as most popular. If you're familiar with Insecure.Org's Nmap Security Scanner, then you might have heard of Fyodor, the tool's creator. In June 2003, Fyodor surveyed Nmap users to determine their favorite security tools. Based on the feedback, Fyodor published "The Top 75 Security Tools," which you can find at http://www.insecure.org/tools.html. NST includes most of these tools. . . .