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

Escalating your pivot – passing attacks down the line

Let me paint a scenario for you. From inside the restricted network you were able to plug into, you’ve just established your foothold on a Windows 7 Enterprise machine with a NIC facing an internal 192.168.249.0/24 network. You can’t see this network from your position, so using your Meterpreter session, you establish routing via your Windows 7 pivot point. After some further reconnaissance, you determine that 192.168.249.128 is running an FTP service. However, you can’t connect to it from your pivot point. After watching the LAN, you notice traffic passing between 192.168.249.128 and 192.168.249.130, so you suspect a trust relationship between those two hosts. You also see the Windows user Phil frequently, so it could be an administrator’s account that is used on different machines or a shared local account for the purposes of setting up these hosts.

I already tried to pivot to 192.168...