Book Image

Mastering Kali Linux for Advanced Penetration Testing, Second Edition - Second Edition

By : Vijay Kumar Velu
Book Image

Mastering Kali Linux for Advanced Penetration Testing, Second Edition - Second Edition

By: Vijay Kumar Velu

Overview of this book

This book will take you, as a tester or security practitioner through the journey of reconnaissance, vulnerability assessment, exploitation, and post-exploitation activities used by penetration testers and hackers. We will start off by using a laboratory environment to validate tools and techniques, and using an application that supports a collaborative approach to penetration testing. Further we will get acquainted with passive reconnaissance with open source intelligence and active reconnaissance of the external and internal networks. We will also focus on how to select, use, customize, and interpret the results from a variety of different vulnerability scanners. Specific routes to the target will also be examined, including bypassing physical security and exfiltration of data using different techniques. You will also get to grips with concepts such as social engineering, attacking wireless networks, exploitation of web applications and remote access connections. Later you will learn the practical aspects of attacking user client systems by backdooring executable files. You will focus on the most vulnerable part of the network—directly and bypassing the controls, attacking the end user and maintaining persistence access through social media. You will also explore approaches to carrying out advanced penetration testing in tightly secured environments, and the book's hands-on approach will help you understand everything you need to know during a Red teaming exercise or penetration testing
Table of Contents (15 chapters)

Summary

In this chapter, we focused on the fundamentals of exploitation and the different tools that convert findings from reconnaissance into a defined action that establishes the right connection between the tester and the target.

Kali provides several tools to facilitate the development, selection, and activation of exploits, including the internal Exploit-DB database, as well as several frameworks that simplify the use and management of the exploits. We took a deep dive into the Metasploit Framework, used Armitage to manage multiple shells, and we also learned how to compile different types of files from Exploit-DB into a real exploit.

We also focused on the how to develop Windows exploits by identifying the different fuzzing techniques and loading the shell code into the custom exploits.

In the next chapter (Chapter 12, Action on the Objective), we will learn about the most...