Book Image

Windows and Linux Penetration Testing from Scratch - Second Edition

By : Phil Bramwell
Book Image

Windows and Linux Penetration Testing from Scratch - Second Edition

By: Phil Bramwell

Overview of this book

Let’s be honest—security testing can get repetitive. If you’re ready to break out of the routine and embrace the art of penetration testing, this book will help you to distinguish yourself to your clients. This pen testing book is your guide to learning advanced techniques to attack Windows and Linux environments from the indispensable platform, Kali Linux. You'll work through core network hacking concepts and advanced exploitation techniques that leverage both technical and human factors to maximize success. You’ll also explore how to leverage public resources to learn more about your target, discover potential targets, analyze them, and gain a foothold using a variety of exploitation techniques while dodging defenses like antivirus and firewalls. The book focuses on leveraging target resources, such as PowerShell, to execute powerful and difficult-to-detect attacks. Along the way, you’ll enjoy reading about how these methods work so that you walk away with the necessary knowledge to explain your findings to clients from all backgrounds. Wrapping up with post-exploitation strategies, you’ll be able to go deeper and keep your access. By the end of this book, you'll be well-versed in identifying vulnerabilities within your clients’ environments and providing the necessary insight for proper remediation.
Table of Contents (23 chapters)
1
Part 1: Recon and Exploitation
9
Part 2: Vulnerability Fundamentals
17
Part 3: Post-Exploitation

DEP and ASLR – the intentional and the unavoidable

So far, we’ve only mentioned these concepts in passing: DEP (which is also called NX for no-execute) and ASLR. I’m afraid we can’t put them off forever. I think I hear a couple of hackers at the back saying, good! It took the impact out of the demonstrations when we had to disable basic protection to make the attack work. Fair enough. When we introduced a basic buffer overflow in Chapter 10, Shellcoding – The Stack, we explicitly disabled ASLR. (To be fair, Windows 7 comes out of the box like that.) This is all by design, though—we can’t understand the core concept without, first, taking a step back. These protection mechanisms are responses to the attacks we’ve demonstrated. But look at me, going off on a tangent again without defining these simple concepts.

Understanding DEP

Do you remember where we stuff our shellcode? The answer is inside the stack or the heap...