Hackers Beware

NT Fundamentals

In this section, we will look at some of the core concepts of NT that will help you understand how the specific exploits work and are needed to properly secure your systems. Remember, the point of this book is not to show an attacker how to break into systems, but to show you how attackers break in. You can use this knowledge to secure your systems and minimize the damage that an attacker can cause. To protect your systems, you need an understanding of how NT works and some of the tools that are available to secure your systems.

The following are the main areas that we will cover in this section:

• NT under the hood

• Physical security

• Registry

• Services running

• Account manager

• Network settings

• Auditing

• NetBIOS

• Service packs

• Resource kits ...