Book Image

Hands-On Penetration Testing on Windows

By : Phil Bramwell
Book Image

Hands-On Penetration Testing on Windows

By: Phil Bramwell

Overview of this book

Windows has always been the go-to platform for users around the globe to perform administration and ad hoc tasks, in settings that range from small offices to global enterprises, and this massive footprint makes securing Windows a unique challenge. This book will enable you to distinguish yourself to your clients. In this book, you'll learn advanced techniques to attack Windows environments from the indispensable toolkit that is Kali Linux. We'll work through core network hacking concepts and advanced Windows exploitation techniques, such as stack and heap overflows, precision heap spraying, and kernel exploitation, using coding principles that allow you to leverage powerful Python scripts and shellcode. We'll wrap up with post-exploitation strategies that enable you to go deeper and keep your access. Finally, we'll introduce kernel hacking fundamentals and fuzzing testing, so you can discover vulnerabilities and write custom exploits. By the end of this book, you'll be well-versed in identifying vulnerabilities within the Windows OS and developing the desired solutions for them.
Table of Contents (25 chapters)
Title Page
Dedication
Packt Upsell
Contributors
Preface
Index

Chapter 8. Windows Kernel Security

The kernel is the colonel of the operating system. It's the software that allows the operating system to link applications to hardware, translating application requests into instructions for the CPU. In fact, it's hard to distinguish an operating system per se from its kernel; it is the heart of the OS. A bug in a user's application may cause crashes, instability, slowness, and so on, but a bug in the kernel can crash the entire system. An even more devastating potential is arbitrary code execution with the highest privileges available on the operating system. Kernel attacks are a hacker's dream.

Absolutely everything in an operating system works with the kernel in some form. As the core of the operating system, the kernel requires isolation from the less-privileged processes on the system; without isolation, it could be corrupted and a corrupt kernel renders the system unusable. This isolation is accomplished by rendering the kernel's space in memory as...