Book Image

Mastering Kali Linux for Web Penetration Testing

By : Michael McPhee
Book Image

Mastering Kali Linux for Web Penetration Testing

By: Michael McPhee

Overview of this book

You will start by delving into some common web application architectures in use, both in private and public cloud instances. You will also learn about the most common frameworks for testing, such as OWASP OGT version 4, and how to use them to guide your efforts. In the next section, you will be introduced to web pentesting with core tools and you will also see how to make web applications more secure through rigorous penetration tests using advanced features in open source tools. The book will then show you how to better hone your web pentesting skills in safe environments that can ensure low-risk experimentation with the powerful tools and features in Kali Linux that go beyond a typical script-kiddie approach. After establishing how to test these powerful tools safely, you will understand how to better identify vulnerabilities, position and deploy exploits, compromise authentication and authorization, and test the resilience and exposure applications possess. By the end of this book, you will be well-versed with the web service architecture to identify and evade various protection mechanisms that are used on the Web today. You will leave this book with a greater mastery of essential test techniques needed to verify the secure design, development, and operation of your customers' web applications.
Table of Contents (13 chapters)

Open source awesomeness

The first thing I do before accepting a task or job is to figure out what I am up against. It wasn't always this way. As a young engineer working on communications systems, I was once asked to lead the development of a specification for a subsystem that sounded cool. Woo hoo – a time to shine! I committed based on the sales pitch that the team lead provided. Reality hit me sometime around the second week in the task, as it was only then that I could look up from my keyboard to envision the remaining path ahead of me. Had I done that research ahead of my commitment, I could have avoided the trouble that was ahead of me. Needless to say, the job got done, but I always look back and wonder how much better it could have been and how much happier and better rested I would have been had I researched the process, constraints, and expectations before...