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

Introducing ROP

So, now we’re seeing two distinct countermeasures that work together to make the lives of the bad guys more difficult. We’re taking away the predictability necessary to find the soft spots of the vulnerable program when loaded in memory, and we’re filing down the areas of memory where execution is allowed to the bare minimum. In other words, DEP/NX and ASLR take a big and stationary target and turn it into a tiny moving target. Hopefully, the hacker in you is already brainstorming the security assumptions of these protection mechanisms. Think of it this way—we’re setting certain regions of memory as non-executable. However, this is a program, so some instructions have to be executed. We’re randomizing the address space so that it’s hard to predict where to find certain structures, but there’s a flow of execution. There has to be a way to find everything needed to get the job done. ROP takes advantage...