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

Preventing flaws in cryptographic implementations


For HTTPS communication, disable all deprecated protocols, such as any version of SSL and even TLS 1.0 and 1.1. The last two need to be taken into consideration for the target users of the application, as TLS 1.2 may not be fully supported by older browsers or systems. Also, disabling weak encryption algorithms, such as DES and MD5 hashing, and modes, such as ECB, must be considered.

Furthermore, the responses of applications must include the secure flag in cookies and the HTTP Strict-Transport-Security (HSTS) header to prevent SSL Strip attacks.

More information about TLS configuration can be found at https://www.owasp.org/index.php/Transport_Layer_Protection_Cheat_Sheet.

Passwords must never be stored in cleartext, and it's inadvisable to use encryption algorithms to protect them. Rather, a one-way, salted hash function should be used. PBKDF2, bcrypt, and SHA-512 are the recommended alternatives. Use of MD5 is discouraged, as modern GPUs can...