Book Image

CompTIA PenTest+ Study Guide

By : Mike Chapple, David Seidl
Book Image

CompTIA PenTest+ Study Guide

By: Mike Chapple, David Seidl

Overview of this book

The CompTIA PenTest+ Study Guide: Exam PT0-001 offers comprehensive preparation for the newest intermediate cybersecurity certification exam. With expert coverage of Exam PT0-001 objectives, this book is your ideal companion throughout all stages of study; whether you’re just embarking on your certification journey or finalizing preparations for the big day, this invaluable resource helps you solidify your understanding of essential skills and concepts. The book shows how to perform security assessments on desktops, mobile devices, cloud, IoT, as well as industrial and embedded systems. You'll learn how to identify security weaknesses and manage system vulnerabilities. As you progress, you'll learn methods to ensure that existing cybersecurity practices, configurations, and policies conform with current best practices. You'll assess your knowledge by simulating cyber attacks to pinpoint security weaknesses in operating systems, networks, and applications. By the end of the book, you'll have all the resources you need to prepare for the exam - identify what you already know, learn what you don’t know, and face the exam with full confidence.
Table of Contents (21 chapters)
Free Chapter
1
Acknowledgments
2
About the Authors
3
Introduction
4
Assessment Test
5
Answers to Assessment Test
18
Index
19
Advert
20
End User License Agreement

Covering Your Tracks

An important post-exploit task is cleaning up the tools, logs, and other traces that the exploit process may have left on the target machine. This can be very simple or quite complex, depending on the techniques that were used, the configuration and capabilities of the target system, and the tools that were needed to complete the attack.

One of the first steps you should consider when covering your tracks is how to make the tools, daemons, or Trojans that you will use for long-term access appear to be innocuous. Some tools like Meterpreter do this by inserting themselves into existing processes, using names similar to common harmless processes or otherwise working to blend in with the normal behaviors and files found on the system.

It can be difficult, if not impossible, to conceal all of the tools required to compromise and retain access to a system. In cases where it is possible that your tools may be discovered, encryption and encoding tools like packers, polymorphic...