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

We have now taken a deep dive into active reconnaissance: attackers face a very real chance of their activities being identified, putting them at risk. Technically, this must be balanced against the need to map a network, find open ports, and determine the operating system and applications that are installed. The real challenge for attackers is to adopt stealthy scanning techniques in order to reduce the risks.

Manual approaches are normally used to create slow scans; however, these approaches may not always be effective. Therefore, attackers take advantage of tools such as the Tor network and various proxy applications to hide their identity.

In the next chapter, we will focus more on using the vulnerability assessment tools and techniques, how scanners identify vulnerabilities, and how to prepare for all the potential exploit candidates.

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