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)

Goal-Based Penetration Testing

Everything starts with a goal to achieve. Remember, there are only two types of people, those who get hacked and those who hack. Therefore, in this chapter, we will discuss the importance of goal-based penetration testing and also how vulnerability scans (Vscans), penetration tests (pentests), and Red Team Exercises (RTEs) typically fail in the absence of a goal. This chapter also provides an overview of security testing and setting up a verification lab, and focuses on customizing Kali to support some advanced aspects of penetration testing. By the end of this chapter, you will have learned about the following:

  • Security testing
  • Classical failures of vulnerability scanning, penetration testing, and red teaming exercises
  • Updating and organizing Kali
  • Using Bash scripts to customize Kali
  • Setting up defined targets
  • Building a verification lab