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)

Down with HTTP?

All of the attacks we've discussed so far in this chapter involve placing strings in form fields that we know can cause havoc on back end databases. Many web services now create dynamic headers based on user input and session state, and a new class of attacks has surfaced to take advantage of the holes this can potentially open up. When attackers put their mind to it, they can inject information into headers that are actually akin to XSS in many cases.

As an example, HTTP is very rigorously mapped in its syntax, such that it treats carriage returns and line feeds as special delineation points between fields. An attacker might slip some of those in to inject their own arbitrary fields and deliver their payloads if the web server is not properly rejecting or sanitizing those inputs. This form of attack is called HTTP response splitting.

Another form of attack...