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

Man-in-the-middle attack (MITM)


In this recipe, we will use a man-in-the-middle attack (MITM) against our target. A MITM attack works by allowing us to eavesdrop on the communication between our target and their legitimate party. For our example, we could utilize Ettercap to eavesdrop on the communication of a Windows host while checking their e-mail on http://www.yahoo.com.

Getting ready

The following requirements need to be fulfilled:

  • A wireless connection to the network is required to complete this task

  • A machine on the network connected to the wireless network

How to do it...

Let's begin the MITM attack by launching Ettercap:

  1. Open a terminal window and start Ettercap. Using the -G option launches the GUI:

    ettercap -G
    
  2. We begin the process by turning on unified sniffing. You can press Shift + U or use the menu and select Sniff | Unified sniffing...:

  3. Select the network interface. In the case of using an MITM attack, we should select our wireless interface.

  4. Next, we turn on scanning for hosts. This...