In Chapter 3, Planning the Attack, we introduced the Cyber Kill Chain and our own tweaks to it in the Penetration Testing Kill Chain. As with any endeavor in life, success is often a product of doing our homework, and doing it well. In the early phases of penetration testing, that certainly holds true. Later, success in compromising our targets and more importantly providing valuable guidance to our customers will often depend on our thorough and efficient exploration of the target.
Some of the tools we are discussing in this book could fill a number of roles within the Kill Chain, but we have chosen to present them in the phase where they may work best, given their primary use and their strongest attributes. As we build our own penetration testing practice, we will most certainly trade tools out for our own favorites, use them in other phases, and evolve our approach to play to our strengths, our customer's requirements, and the evolving...