Networks Associates Technology, Inc.

Networks Associates, Inc.

Oliver Friedrichs

Timothy Nakula Newsham

Thomas Henry Ptacek

A system and method for building an executable script for performing a network security audit is described. A source program expressed in a network packet simulation language is stored. The same program includes a plurality of statements encoding logic to simulate an exchange of network protocol compliant-packets. Each statement is scanned into a sequence of individual tokens. Each token is parsed into grammatical phrases comprising at least one of an expression and a control construct. Each expression evaluates a data value. Each control construct defines a process flow. The grammatical phrases are compiled into program instructions to execute the logic on a target machine.

System and method for building an executable script for performing a network security audit

A development system providing a Custom Attack Simulation Language (CASL) for testing networks is described. In particular, the development system implements methodology for facilitating development of network attack simulations. The system includes an editor or authoring system for creating a source code description or Scripts (i.e., CASL-syntax Script) of the simulation program under development. The Scripts, in turn, are &ldquo;compiled&rdquo; by a CASL compiler into a compiled CASL program, that may then be used to simulate attacks against a network. CASL makes it easier for users, particularly network and system administrators, to experiment with and learn about the way their networks operate. Since networks work by exchanging packets of information, CASL focuses on allowing users to read and write packets directly to and from the network using a high level programming language. Unlike general-purpose scripting languages, CASL is designed specifically to make it easy to construct, read, and write raw network packets. In this manner, the system provides an extremely flexible and general way to manipulate networks and allows one to create simulation programs in just a few lines of CASL code, instead of hundreds of lines of code typically required when using conventional programming language environments.

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San Jose, CA, United States of America

Oliver Friedrichs