Book Image

Web Penetration Testing with Kali Linux - Third Edition

By : Gilberto Najera-Gutierrez, Juned Ahmed Ansari
Book Image

Web Penetration Testing with Kali Linux - Third Edition

By: Gilberto Najera-Gutierrez, Juned Ahmed Ansari

Overview of this book

Web Penetration Testing with Kali Linux - Third Edition shows you how to set up a lab, helps you understand the nature and mechanics of attacking websites, and explains classical attacks in great depth. This edition is heavily updated for the latest Kali Linux changes and the most recent attacks. Kali Linux shines when it comes to client-side attacks and fuzzing in particular. From the start of the book, you'll be given a thorough grounding in the concepts of hacking and penetration testing, and you'll see the tools used in Kali Linux that relate to web application hacking. You'll gain a deep understanding of classicalSQL, command-injection flaws, and the many ways to exploit these flaws. Web penetration testing also needs a general overview of client-side attacks, which is rounded out by a long discussion of scripting and input validation flaws. There is also an important chapter on cryptographic implementation flaws, where we discuss the most recent problems with cryptographic layers in the networking stack. The importance of these attacks cannot be overstated, and defending against them is relevant to most internet users and, of course, penetration testers. At the end of the book, you'll use an automated technique called fuzzing to identify flaws in a web application. Finally, you'll gain an understanding of web application vulnerabilities and the ways they can be exploited using the tools in Kali Linux.
Table of Contents (19 chapters)
Title Page
Copyright and Credits
Dedication
Packt Upsell
Contributors
Preface
Index

Chapter 2. Setting Up Your Lab with Kali Linux

Preparation is the key to everything; it becomes even more important when working on a penetration testing project, where you get a limited amount of time for reconnaissance, scanning, and exploitation. Eventually, you can gain access and present a detailed report to the customer. Each penetration test that you conduct will be different in nature and may require a different approach from the tests that you conducted earlier. Tools play a major role in penetration testing. So, you need to prepare your toolkit beforehand and have hands-on experience with all of the tools that you will need to execute the test.

In this chapter, we will cover the following topics:

  • An overview of Kali Linux and changes from the previous version
  • The different ways of installing Kali Linux
  • Virtualization versus installation on physical hardware
  • A walk-through and configuration of important tools in Kali Linux
  • Vulnerable web applications and virtual machines to set up a testing...