Privilege Escalation | Mastering Kali Linux for Advanced Penetration Testing, Second Edition

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

By : Vijay Kumar Velu

4.4 (11)

Buy this Book

Mastering Kali Linux for Advanced Penetration Testing, Second Edition

4.4 (11)

By: Vijay Kumar Velu

Buy this Book

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

Preface

What this book covers

What you need for this book

Who this book is for

Conventions

Reader feedback

Customer support

Free Chapter

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

Open Source Intelligence and Passive Reconnaissance

Basic principles of reconnaissance

Google Hacking Database

Creating custom word lists for cracking passwords

Summary

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

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

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

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

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

Attacking Remote Access

Exploiting vulnerabilities in communication protocols

Attacking Secure Sockets Layer (SSL)

Attacking an IPSec virtual private network

Summary

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

Bypassing Security Controls

Bypassing Network Access Control (NAC)

Bypassing antivirus using different frameworks

Bypassing application-level controls

Bypassing Windows-specific operating system controls

Summary

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

Action on the Objective

Activities on the compromised local system

Horizontal escalation and lateral movement

Summary

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

Command and Control

Using persistent agents

Exfiltration of data

Summary

In this chapter, we looked at the methodology of escalating privileges and explored different methods and tools that can be utilized to achieve the goal of the penetration test.

We first started with common system-level privilege escalation using bypassuac, and also by utilizing existing Windows-scheduled tasks.

We focused on utilizing Meterpreter to gain system-level control and later we took a deep dive into PowerShell's Empire tool, followed by harvesting the credentials by using password sniffers on the network. We also utilized responder and SMB relay attacks to gain remote system access, and we used Responder to capture the passwords of different systems on a network that utilizes SMB.

We completely compromised an Active Directory using a structured approach. Finally, we exploited the access rights in an Active Directory using an Empire PowerShell, and compromised...

Tech Concepts

Programming languages

Tech Tools