Book Image

Mastering Kali Linux for Advanced Penetration Testing, Second Edition - Second Edition

By : Vijay Kumar Velu
Book Image

Mastering Kali Linux for Advanced Penetration Testing, Second Edition - Second Edition

By: Vijay Kumar Velu

Overview of this book

This book will take you, as a tester or security practitioner through the journey of reconnaissance, vulnerability assessment, exploitation, and post-exploitation activities used by penetration testers and hackers. We will start off by using a laboratory environment to validate tools and techniques, and using an application that supports a collaborative approach to penetration testing. Further we will get acquainted with passive reconnaissance with open source intelligence and active reconnaissance of the external and internal networks. We will also focus on how to select, use, customize, and interpret the results from a variety of different vulnerability scanners. Specific routes to the target will also be examined, including bypassing physical security and exfiltration of data using different techniques. You will also get to grips with concepts such as social engineering, attacking wireless networks, exploitation of web applications and remote access connections. Later you will learn the practical aspects of attacking user client systems by backdooring executable files. You will focus on the most vulnerable part of the network—directly and bypassing the controls, attacking the end user and maintaining persistence access through social media. You will also explore approaches to carrying out advanced penetration testing in tightly secured environments, and the book's hands-on approach will help you understand everything you need to know during a Red teaming exercise or penetration testing

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Table of Contents (15 chapters)
Preface
Preface
What this book covers
What you need for this book
Who this book is for
Conventions
Reader feedback
Customer support
Free Chapter
1
Goal-Based Penetration Testing
Goal-Based Penetration Testing
Conceptual overview of security testing
Classical failures of vulnerability scanning, penetration testing, and red team exercises
The testing methodology
Introduction to Kali Linux – history and purpose
Installing and updating Kali
Using Kali from a portable device
Installing Kali into a virtual machine
VirtualBox
Installing to a Docker appliance
Installing Kali to the cloud – creating an AWS instance
Organizing Kali
Configuring and customizing Kali
Summary
2
Open Source Intelligence and Passive Reconnaissance
Open Source Intelligence and Passive Reconnaissance
Basic principles of reconnaissance
Google Hacking Database
Creating custom word lists for cracking passwords
Summary
3
Active Reconnaissance of External and Internal Networks
Active Reconnaissance of External and Internal Networks
Stealth scanning strategies
DNS reconnaissance and route mapping
Employing comprehensive reconnaissance applications
Identifying the external network infrastructure
Mapping beyond the firewall
IDS/IPS identification
Enumerating hosts
Port, operating system, and service discovery
Writing your own port scanner using netcat
Large-scale scanning
Summary
4
Vulnerability Assessment
Vulnerability Assessment
Vulnerability nomenclature
Local and online vulnerability databases
Vulnerability scanning with nmap
Web application vulnerability scanners
Vulnerability scanners for mobile applications
The OpenVAS network vulnerability scanner
Specialized scanners
Threat modeling
Summary
5
Physical Security and Social Engineering
Physical Security and Social Engineering
Methodology and attack methods
Physical attacks at the console
Creating a rogue physical device
The Social Engineering Toolkit (SET)
Hiding executables and obfuscating the attacker's URL
Escalating an attack using DNS redirection
Launching a phishing attack
Summary
6
Wireless Attacks
Wireless Attacks
Configuring Kali for wireless attacks
Wireless reconnaissance
Bypassing a hidden SSID
Bypassing MAC address authentication and open authentication
Attacking WPA and WPA2
DoS attacks against wireless communications
Compromising enterprise implementations of WPA/WPA2
Working with Ghost Phisher
Summary
7
Reconnaissance and Exploitation of Web-Based Applications
Reconnaissance and Exploitation of Web-Based Applications
Methodology
Hackers mindmap
Conducting reconnaissance of websites
Client-side proxies
Application-specific attacks
Maintaining access with web shells
Summary
8
Attacking Remote Access
Attacking Remote Access
Exploiting vulnerabilities in communication protocols
Attacking Secure Sockets Layer (SSL)
Attacking an IPSec virtual private network
Summary
9
Client-Side Exploitation
Client-Side Exploitation
Backdooring executable files
Attacking a system using hostile scripts
The Cross-Site Scripting Framework (XSSF)
The Browser Exploitation Framework (BeEF)
Understanding the BeEF browser
Summary
10
Bypassing Security Controls
Bypassing Security Controls
Bypassing Network Access Control (NAC)
Bypassing antivirus using different frameworks
Bypassing application-level controls
Bypassing Windows-specific operating system controls
Summary
11
Exploitation
Exploitation
The Metasploit framework
Exploiting targets using Metasploit Framework
Exploiting multiple targets using Metasploit Framework resource files
Exploiting multiple targets with Armitage
Using public exploits
Developing a Windows exploit
Summary
12
Action on the Objective
Action on the Objective
Activities on the compromised local system
Horizontal escalation and lateral movement
Summary
13
Privilege Escalation
Privilege Escalation
Overview of common escalation methodology
Local system escalation
Credential harvesting and escalation attacks
Escalating access rights in Active Directory
Compromising Kerberos – the golden ticket attack
Summary
14
Command and Control
Command and Control
Using persistent agents
Exfiltration of data
Summary

Using Kali from a portable device

Installing Kali to a portable device is fairly simple. In some situations, clients do not permit the use of external laptops inside a secure facility; in such cases, typically, a testing laptop is provided by the client to the pentester to perform scans. Running Kali from a portable device has more advantages during a pentest or RTE:

  • Most portable devices can be kept in the pocket, as in the case of a USB drive or a mobile phone
  • It can be run live without making any changes to the host operating system
  • You can customize the build of Kali and even make the storage persistent

There is a simple three-step process to making a USB into a portable Kali from a Windows PC:

  1. Download the official Kali Linux image from the following URL:
    http://docs.kali.org/introduction/download-official-kali-linux-images.
  2. Download Win32 Disk Imager from https://sourceforge.net/projects/win32diskimager/.

  1. Open Win32 Disk Imager as an administrator. Plug the USB drive into the PC's available USB port. You will see something similar to the following screenshot; select the correct drive name and then click on Write:

Once complete, exit Win32 Disk Imager and safely remove the USB. Kali is now ready on the portable device and can be plugged into any laptop to be booted up live. If your host operating system is Linux, this can be achieved by two standard commands: sudo fdisk -l , which will display all the disks mounted on the drive, and dd if=kali linux.iso of=/dev/nameofthedrive bs=512k. That's it. The dd command-line utility does the convert and copy if it is used for the input file, where of is for the output file and bs is for the block size.

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