Cyber Reading List

A very useful reading list of technical documents related to internetworking and cybersecurity.

History of the Internet

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• On Distributed Communications

  Baran, | The Rand Corporation

  First introduction to packet switched style distributed networks which were originally designed to create resilient military communications systems that could sustain pretty significant attacks.

• Brief History of the Internet

  Internet Society

  Literally just a brief history of the internet.

• Netheads vs Bellheads

  Steingberg | WIRED Magazine

  "The most vicious battle on the Net today is a secret war between techies. At stake is nothing less than the organization of cyberspace."

Networking & Internetworking

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• The Design Philosophy of the DARPA Internet Protocols

  Clark | M.I.T. Laboratory for Computer Science

  General overview of the principals/requirements that inspired the design of TCP/IP. A good explination of why TCP/IP looks and works the way it does.

• End-to-end Arguments in System Design

  Saltzer, Reed & Clark | M.I.T. Laboratory for Computer Science

• Internet Protocol

  USC Information Sciences Institute | IETF RFC 791

• Transmission Control Protocol

  USC Information Sciences Institute | IETF RFC 793

• Domain Names - Concepts and Facilities

  Mockapetris | IETF RFC 882

  Original RFC arguing for domain names on the internet, their need and ideas for a domain name system

• Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol

  Bucknell University | IETF RFC 1531

  RFC that outlines the system that enables computers to automatically configure themselves for network access once they're wired into a network. (i.e. why you don't need to configure anything when you connect to ethernet/WiFi)

• Congestion Control Principals

  Floyd | IETF RFC 2914

  RFC describing the correct implementation of congestion control in TCP. Consider this when comparing ethernet v. WiFi for optimal performance.

• Congestion Avoidance and Control

  Jacobson, Karels

  Original research paper outlining Van Jacobson's congestion avoidance and control ideas that are widely used in today's TCP implementations.

• The IP Network Address Translator (NAT)

  Egevang, Francis | IETF RFC 1631

  Explains how NATs work and why the world can have more internet connected devices than the internet has IP addresses (at least in IPv4).

• Address Allocation for Private Internets

  Rekhter, Moskowitz, Karrenberg, de Groot, Lear | IETF RFC 1918

  This may help you make sense of device addressing inside your NAT, like what is 192.168.0.0?

• Software-Defined Networking (SDN)

  Shenker | EE122 Fall 2011

  A short slide deck on software-defined networks and why programmable data-planes and centralized control-planes are probably the future of networking

The Cloud

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• TIA-942 Data Center Standards Overview

  ADC Telecommunications | TIA-942

  A very high level overview of datacenter standards/construction

General Cybersecurity

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• Computer Security Incident Handling Guide

  NIST Publiction 800-61

• Exploring Web Authentication Schemes

  Bonneau, Herley, van Oorschot, Stajano

• Reflections on Trusting Trust

  Ken Thompson | Turing Award Lecture

• Trusting Trust

  MIT Slide Deck

• Countering Trusting Trust

  Bruce Schneier | Schneier on Security

• Designing an Authentication System: a Dialogue in Four Scenes

  Bryant | M.I.T.

  In the form of a dialogue, describes how M.I.T.'s Kerberos authentication system works.

• Randomness Requirements for Security

  Eastlake, Schiller, Crocker| IETF RFC 4086

  Interesting RFC about the importance of entropy in cybersecure systems and different methods that can be used to achieve randomness (or pseudorandomness)

Cyber Warfare & Espionage

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• Intelligence-Driven Computer Network Defense

  Hutchins, Cloppert, Amin | Lockheed Martin Corporation

• APT 1 Exposing One of China’s Cyber Espionage Units

  Mandiant Solutions | FireEye

Encryption

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• "Schneier's Law"

  Bruce Schneier | Schneier on Security

Blockchain

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• Hashcash: A Denial of Service Counter-Measure

  Back | hashcash.org

TOR, Anonymity and Privacy

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https://www.cs.cornell.edu/people/egs/papers/egs-herbivore.pdf https://users.ece.cmu.edu/~adrian/731-sp04/readings/dcnets.html Chaumian DC-Nets https://www.freehaven.net/anonbib/cache/chaum-mix.pdf http://www.cs.jhu.edu/~fabian/courses/CS600.424/course_papers/goldschlag96hiding.pdf https://www.usenix.org/legacy/publications/library/proceedings/sec04/tech/full_papers/dingledine/dingledine.pdf

Exploit Specific Readings

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• The Rise and Decline ofNTP DDoS Attacks

  Czyz, Kallitsis, Gharaibeh, Papadopoulos, Bailey, Karir

• How security flaws work: The buffer overflow

  Ars Staff | Ars Technica

  Just an article about how buffer overflows work

Papers at the intersection of fitness and technology

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• Rationale and resources for teaching the mathematical modeling of athletic training and performance

  Clarke, Skiba

• Stages and processes of self-change of smoking: toward an integrative model of change

  Prochaska, DiClemente

• Application of the Transtheoretical Model to substance abuse: historical development and future directions

  Migneault, Adams, Read

• The transtheoretical model as applied to dietary behaviour and outcomes

  Spencer

Other Stuff

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• Guidelines for Evidence Collection and Archiving

  Brezinski, Killalea | IETF RFC 3227

https://www.schneier.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/paper-self-study.pdf https://www.sans.org/reading-room/whitepapers/vpns/prime-numbers-public-key-cryptography-969 https://wmx-api-production.s3.amazonaws.com/courses/3455/supplementary/STIX_Whitepaper_v1.1.pdf