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

Hack tunnels – netcat backdoors on the fly

I can hear what you’re thinking. You’re wondering whether netcat is really a good idea for this purpose. It isn’t an encrypted tunnel with any authentication mechanism, and nc.exe is notoriously flagged by AV software. Well, we’re running with netcat for now because it makes for a nice demonstration, but there is a practical purpose – I’m not sure there’s anything quite as fast as this method for creating a persistent backdoor into a shell session on a Windows target. Nevertheless, you can leverage this method with any listener you like. Let’s look closer at our handcrafted payload.

Uploading and configuring persistent netcat with Meterpreter

We’ve seen the easy way to transfer files over the LAN with SimpleHTTPServer. This time, we’re assuming a Meterpreter foothold has been established and we’re just setting up a quicker callback number.

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