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

Summary

In this chapter, we learned about more advanced Metasploit usage. We took our payload generation skills to the next level by leveraging a tool outside of the Metasploit Framework, Shellter, to leverage Metasploit payloads. We also explored the capabilities of msfvenom, today’s union of what used to be Metasploit’s payload and encoder tools. After payloads, we looked at how to build a custom module with Ruby and how to get it working within Metasploit. We then examined making Metasploit use highly organized and efficient with the Armitage frontend GUI. We also demonstrated how to enumerate and exploit a target in Armitage. Finally, we learned how to leverage Metasploit payloads to construct powerful social engineering attacks. In the true hacking spirit, the next chapter is going to take us deeper into how the processor sees our tidbits of code.