NST General Information

What is the Network Security Toolkit?

The Network Security Toolkit is a Linux distribution based on Fedora with additional network security tools installed and ready to run. The distribution in several forms and can be booted and run as a "live" boot (without installation) as well as being installed to a hard disk or run as a virtual machine.

Before each release, the developers strive to make certain that the latest security patches and fixes for Fedora and the additional network security tools are up to date.

What are the System Requirements?

The system requirements for running the Network Security Toolkit include following:

• A i686 or x86_64 compatible CPU (Pentium III or later).
• At least 256MB of RAM (we recommend 512MB if you want to use a graphical desktop).
• A DVD drive and BIOS capable of booting from a DVD. If your system supports booting from USB devices, a 2GB USB flash drive can be used instead of a DVD.
• A Fedora Ethernet Adapter or WIFI card.

It is important to note that a hard disk is not required. And though the Network Security Toolkit has the capability to use hard disks, it does not do so by default.

In addition to the minimum requirements, the following equipment is supported:

• A video adapter and monitor.
• A keyboard.
• A standard serial port.
• Multiple Ethernet Adapters or WIFI cards.
• A mouse.
• Disk drives.
• USB devices.

What is the Recommended System?

If you are like Ron (heavily involved in setting up and Enterprise Network Security Architectures in the real world), you'll probably find yourself wanting to build custom Network Security Toolkit systems. Most likely, you'll be able to use most components that you come across. However, if you'd rather be safe, you may want to make use of Ron's current entry level parts list. If nothing else it serves as a good starting point for a suggested component list to get NST up and going. The following table is a breakdown of Ron's entry level parts preference and approximate prices as of 2004-Mar-21 (all amounts are in USD). This particular system configuration includes 3 10/100 network interfaces. It is important to stress that a CDROM with a fast read speed (52x) is beneficial to experience the best results from NST.

TBD

Where do I go for information?

• http://wiki.networksecuritytoolkit.org/ - This wiki serves is the primary location for information on using the NST.
• http://twitter.com/NetSecToolkit - This is the NST Twitter feed. The NST authors will often "tweet" when enhancements are made to the NST distribution (typically when new packages become available).
• http://www.networksecuritytoolkit.org/ - The site's home page is updated each time a new release of the NST ISO image is posted to SourceForge.
• http://wiki.networksecuritytoolkit.org/repo/f13/i686/repoview/ - This link provides a list of packages which the NST developers have recently released for the 32 bit NST build (there is a 64 bit repository as well). These links can be used to tell what packages have recently been updated.
• http://sourceforge.net/projects/nst - This is the project's development site. You can download the current NST release from here, ask for help on the NST forum, and even browse the source code or monitor the latest commit messages posted by the NST authors.