Book Image

BackTrack 5 Cookbook

By : Willie L. Pritchett, David De Smet
Book Image

BackTrack 5 Cookbook

By: Willie L. Pritchett, David De Smet

Overview of this book

<p>BackTrack is a Linux-based penetration testing arsenal that aids security professionals in the ability to perform assessments in a purely native environment dedicated to hacking. BackTrack is a distribution based on the Debian GNU/Linux distribution aimed at digital forensics and penetration testing use. It is named after backtracking, a search algorithm.<br /><br />"BackTrack 5 Cookbook" provides you with practical recipes featuring many popular tools that cover the basics of a penetration test: information gathering, vulnerability identification, exploitation, priviledge escalation, and covering your tracks.<br /><br />The book begins by covering the installation of BackTrack 5 and setting up a virtual environment to perform your tests.<br /><br />We then dip into recipes involving the basic principles of a penetration test such as information gathering, vulnerability identification, and exploitation. You will further learn about privilege escalation, radio network analysis, Voice over IP, Password cracking, and BackTrack forensics.<br /><br />"BackTrack 5 Cookbook" will serve as an excellent source of information for the security professional and novice alike.</p>
Table of Contents (17 chapters)
BackTrack 5 Cookbook
Credits
About the Authors
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Nessus – finding Linux-specific vulnerabilities


Nessus allows us to attack a wide range of vulnerabilities depending on our feed, and we will confine our list of assessing the vulnerabilities of our target to those specific to the type of information we seek to gain from the assessment. In this recipe, we will explore how to find Linux-specific vulnerabilities using Nessus. These are vulnerabilities specific to the machines that run Linux on our network.

Getting ready

To complete this recipe, you will need a virtual machine(s) to test against:

  • Metasploitable 2

  • Any other flavor of Linux

How to do it...

Let's begin the process of finding Linux-specific vulnerabilities with Nessus by opening the Mozilla Firefox web browser:

  1. Log in to Nessus at http://127.0.0.1:8834.

  2. Go to Policies.

  3. Click on Add Policy:

  4. On the General tab, perform the following tasks:

    1. Enter a name for your scan. We chose Linux Vulnerabilities but you can choose any name you wish.

      • Visibility has two options:

      • Shared: Other users have the...