Cisco Network Security Troubleshooting Handbook

The bootable Knoppix security CD, which provides access to a bootable CD image, includes most of the common security/attack tools that are available. You can download this image to create your own CD that you can use on any system (since it is bootable). You do not need any specific operating system to install this software. Just reboot your PC with this CD. This removes the normal requirement to have a Linux box on which to build the security tools.

This tool can be extremely useful for auditing your network to see if the Network Security devices are working as expected. One such example would be to simulate attack, using this tool, to the segment of the network where Network IPS sensor is deployed. You can determine if the IPS signature tuning is working properly. For example, if one of your signatures is tuned on IPS to fire an alarm with a specific attack launched by the tool, you should get an alarm if the signature tuning is working properly.

For more details on the Knoppix tool, refer to the following link: http://www.knoppix-std.org/