Book Image

The Ultimate Kali Linux Book - Second Edition

By : Glen D. Singh
5 (1)
Book Image

The Ultimate Kali Linux Book - Second Edition

5 (1)
By: Glen D. Singh

Overview of this book

Kali Linux is the most popular and advanced penetration testing Linux distribution within the cybersecurity industry. Using Kali Linux, a cybersecurity professional will be able to discover and exploit various vulnerabilities and perform advanced penetration testing on both enterprise wired and wireless networks. This book is a comprehensive guide for those who are new to Kali Linux and penetration testing that will have you up to speed in no time. Using real-world scenarios, you’ll understand how to set up a lab and explore core penetration testing concepts. Throughout this book, you’ll focus on information gathering and even discover different vulnerability assessment tools bundled in Kali Linux. You’ll learn to discover target systems on a network, identify security flaws on devices, exploit security weaknesses and gain access to networks, set up Command and Control (C2) operations, and perform web application penetration testing. In this updated second edition, you’ll be able to compromise Active Directory and exploit enterprise networks. Finally, this book covers best practices for performing complex web penetration testing techniques in a highly secured environment. By the end of this Kali Linux book, you’ll have gained the skills to perform advanced penetration testing on enterprise networks using Kali Linux.
Table of Contents (23 chapters)
1
Section 1: Getting Started with Penetration Testing
5
Section 2: Reconnaissance and Network Penetration Testing
11
Section 3: Red Teaming Techniques
17
Section 4: Social Engineering and Web Application Attacks

Types of social engineering

While social engineering focuses on psychologically hacking the human mind, there are various types of social engineering attacks, such as traditional human-based, computer-based, and even mobile-based attacks. During this section, you will discover the fundamentals and characteristics of each type of social engineering attack.

Human-based

In human-based social engineering, the threat actor or penetration tester usually pretends to be someone with authority, such as a person who is important within the organization. This means the threat actor can attempt to impersonate a director or senior member of staff and request a password change on the victim's user account. An easy form of impersonation that usually gets a user to trust you quickly is posing as technical support. Imagine calling an employee while you're pretending to be an IT person from the organization's helpdesk team and requesting the user to provide their user account details...