Book Image

Web Penetration Testing with Kali Linux

Book Image

Web Penetration Testing with Kali Linux

Overview of this book

Kali Linux is built for professional penetration testing and security auditing. It is the next-generation of BackTrack, the most popular open-source penetration toolkit in the world. Readers will learn how to think like real attackers, exploit systems, and expose vulnerabilities. Even though web applications are developed in a very secure environment and have an intrusion detection system and firewall in place to detect and prevent any malicious activity, open ports are a pre-requisite for conducting online business. These ports serve as an open door for attackers to attack these applications. As a result, penetration testing becomes essential to test the integrity of web-applications. Web Penetration Testing with Kali Linux is a hands-on guide that will give you step-by-step methods on finding vulnerabilities and exploiting web applications. "Web Penetration Testing with Kali Linux" looks at the aspects of web penetration testing from the mind of an attacker. It provides real-world, practical step-by-step instructions on how to perform web penetration testing exercises. You will learn how to use network reconnaissance to pick your targets and gather information. Then, you will use server-side attacks to expose vulnerabilities in web servers and their applications. Client attacks will exploit the way end users use web applications and their workstations. You will also learn how to use open source tools to write reports and get tips on how to sell penetration tests and look out for common pitfalls. On the completion of this book, you will have the skills needed to use Kali Linux for web penetration tests and expose vulnerabilities on web applications and clients that access them.
Table of Contents (15 chapters)
Web Penetration Testing with Kali Linux
Credits
About the Authors
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Introducing Kali Linux


The creators of BackTrack have released a new, advanced Penetration Testing Linux distribution named Kali Linux. BackTrack 5 was the last major version of the BackTrack distribution. The creators of BackTrack decided that to move forward with the challenges of cyber security and modern testing a new foundation was needed. Kali Linux was born and released on March 13th, 2013. Kali Linux is based on Debian and an FHS-compliant filesystem.

Kali has many advantages over BackTrack. It comes with many more updated tools. The tools are streamlined with the Debian repositories and synchronized four times a day. That means users have the latest package updates and security fixes. The new compliant filesystems translate into running most tools from anywhere on the system. Kali has also made customization, unattended installation, and flexible desktop environments strong features in Kali Linux.

Kali Linux is available for download at http://www.kali.org/.