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Network Security and Mitigation Strategies Answers

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Edith Cowan University

Assessment 2: Report

Outcomes

The purpose of this assessment task is to apply the student’s understanding and knowledge gained from the weekly content in articulating and writing a report that:

  1. analyses contemporary network security issues and develops appropriate mitigation strategies, and
  2. evaluates a contemporary network for vulnerabilities.

Overview

Internet of Things (IoT) devices can be used to sense and share data from its surrounding environment for various purposes that can be useful for both humans and machines. These can be as simple as measuring the temperature of a room or more critical tasks such as monitoring the heart-rate of a sick patient in a hospital. The advances in hardware design, communication protocols, and computing technologies have created an ecosystem of a variety of IoT devices by numerous vendors and underlying infrastructure.

The network diagram provided (Figure 1 - see below) illustrates the various IoT devices integrated in a medium sized organisation’s IT network. Table 1 (see below) provides detailed specifications of the devices including hardware, software, and firmware details. Although the network is already secured with various defences, there are several problems that can lead to the organisation being compromised by cyber criminals.

Instructions

You have been hired as an external cyber security consultant to analyse the network for security issues and recommend solutions to mitigate these risks in the form of a technical report. The report is intended to be submitted to the management committee of the organisation. Therefore, highly technical concepts must be further described to a level understood by a novice audience.

Your report should consist of the following:

  1. Identify and contextualise two (2) security issues related to the IoT devices and two (2) security issues related to the IT infrastructure. You may consider aspects related to hardware, software, firmware, and protocols.
  2. Further support the above security issues by describing an actual attack that has occurred for both IoT and IT.
  3. Explain two vulnerabilities including the CVE that exist in this organisation.
  4. Propose and justify solutions to address the issues that you have identified in the task (1).

Please note that discussions related to security policies are beyond the scope of this assessment and therefore should be excluded from your report.

Marking Criteria

Each of the following criteria are worth 8 marks, with a total of 40 marks for the whole assessment.

  1. Identification of security issues (two for IoT and two for IT)
  2. Actual attacks described for IoT and IT
  3. Two vulnerabilities/CVE explained
  4. Solutions proposed and justified to address the four security issues identified
  5. Quality of report based on sources and referencing, depth of research, critique, and writing

Resources

  1. PDF/SVG/draw.io File
  2. Report template

Table 1

Device

Details

Cisco ASA 5585-X

Used as the edge firewall for the organisation. Last software/firmware update unknown.

Netgear GS116PP-100AJS

Unmanaged network switch.

Linksys WRT1900AC

Wireless router using WEP shared key authentication.

Wireless Temperature Sensor

Custom built temperature sensor.

Waterproof DS18B20 Digital temperature sensor connected to an ESP8266 board.

Using MQTT to communicate to an Ubuntu desktop installed in LAN1.

File Server

Windows Server 2016

Directory Server

Windows Server 2016

Proxy Server

Ubuntu Server 16.04 LTS Squid proxy

Mail Server

Ubuntu Server 16.04 LTS

Postfix 3.2

SquirrelMail 1.4.23

Apache 2

PHP 5

LAN 1

Various Desktop configurations

9 x Windows 10 PCs

1 x Ubuntu Desktop 18.10 running the MQTT broker software for the temperature sensor

LAN 2

Various Desktop configurations 15 x Windows 10 PCs
network diagram for medium sized organisation’s IT network

Report Template

The report should be properly word processed and formatted accordingly to a professional standard and suitable to the target audience. As a minimum, the report should have the following sections. You may add sub-headings or other content as required.

  • Cover Page
  • Table of Contents
  • Introduction
  • Security Issues
  • Attack Scenarios
  • Vulnerabilities
  • Proposed Countermeasure(s)/Solution(s)
  • References
  • Appendices (as needed)

Question 1: Hubs are no longer in common use. Why is this and what have they been replaced with in organisations? What could a hub be used for in modern networking?

Question 2: What is a router used for? How is this different from what a switch is used for?

Question 3: Use Cisco Packet Tracer to connect three computers via a hub (see the following image) and configure them with static IP addresses.

Use Cisco Packet Tracer to connect three computers via a hub

What happens when two PDUs are sent at the same time (as in the following image)?

two PDUs are sent at the same time

Week-5

You have been asked to design a solution for connecting two buildings with a cabled connection. Your design will lead to a project where a buried cable will be run between these two buildings. The buildings are 120m apart from basement wall to basement wall. What solution would you choose? Why? What factors would you consider when coming to this conclusion?

Week-6

Question 1: What is the primary purpose of a VPN? What are the differences between a PPTP VPN, an L2TP VPN and an OpenVPN VPN?

Question 2: What is the difference between PaaS and IaaS in cloud computing? What kind of businesses are most likely to use each?

Question 3: What does the “Asynchronous” part of the ADSL protocol refer to? How does this function?

Question 4: How do most network firewalls tell the difference between different kinds of network traffic? (eg. how could a firewall know to block RDP connections but not HTTP connections?)