Book Image

Becoming the Hacker

By : Adrian Pruteanu
Book Image

Becoming the Hacker

By: Adrian Pruteanu

Overview of this book

Becoming the Hacker will teach you how to approach web penetration testing with an attacker's mindset. While testing web applications for performance is common, the ever-changing threat landscape makes security testing much more difficult for the defender. There are many web application tools that claim to provide a complete survey and defense against potential threats, but they must be analyzed in line with the security needs of each web application or service. We must understand how an attacker approaches a web application and the implications of breaching its defenses. Through the first part of the book, Adrian Pruteanu walks you through commonly encountered vulnerabilities and how to take advantage of them to achieve your goal. The latter part of the book shifts gears and puts the newly learned techniques into practice, going over scenarios where the target may be a popular content management system or a containerized application and its network. Becoming the Hacker is a clear guide to web application security from an attacker's point of view, from which both sides can benefit.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
Becoming the Hacker
Contributors
Preface
Index

Vulnerable Docker scenario


As powerful as Docker and container technology is, it can sometimes introduce complexity into the application lifecycle and that does not typically bode well for security. The ability to quickly deploy, test, and develop applications at scale certainly has its benefits but can easily let security vulnerabilities slip through the cracks.

Software is only as secure as its configuration. If an application is unpatched or not properly locked down, it increases the attack surface and the likelihood of compromise significantly. Docker is no different and the default configuration is usually not enough. We're here to exploit these configuration issues and deployment mistakes.

Compromising an application running in a container is one thing, but escalating privilege to the host can be the icing on the cake. To illustrate the impact of poorly configured and insecurely deployed Docker containers, we will use NotSoSecure's Vulnerable Docker VM. This is a well-put-together VM...