Chapter 1: Introduction to Ethical Hacking

Cybersecurity is one of the most rapidly growing fields within the information technology (IT) industry. Each day security professionals are discovering new and emerging threats at a rapid rate and organizations' assets are becoming compromised by threat actors. Due to these threats in the digital world, new professions are being created within many organizations for people who can help protect and safeguard their assets. This book is designed with the intent to provide you with the knowledge, wisdom, and skills that an aspiring penetration tester needs in order to be super awesome within the cybersecurity industry. A penetration tester is a cybersecurity professional who has the skills of a hacker; they are hired by an organization to perform simulations of real-world cyber-attacks on the organization's network infrastructure with the objective of discovering and exploiting security vulnerabilities. This allows the organization to determine any security weaknesses and implement security controls to prevent and mitigate a real cyber-attack.

Throughout the course of this book, you will learn how to use one of the most popular Linux distributions within the cybersecurity industry to simulate real-world cyber-attacks in penetration testing exercises to discover and exploit security weaknesses on systems and networks. The Kali Linux operating system has tons of pre-installed Linux packages/applications that are widely used within the cybersecurity industry, hence it's an arsenal filled with everything you will need. We'll be using a student-centric approach, filled with a lot of hands-on exercises starting from beginner level to intermediate, to more advanced topics and techniques, including red team engagements.

In this chapter, you will gain an in-depth understanding of the various characteristics of various threat actors, their intentions, and the motives behind their cyber-attacks against their targets. Next, you will learn about key factors that are important to threat actors, which determine the level of complexity to compromise a system in comparison to cybersecurity professionals such as ethical hackers and penetration testers who are hired to discover and exploit hidden security weaknesses within a target organization. Furthermore, you will also discover the need for penetration testing, its phases, and approaches used by seasoned professionals within the industry. Lastly, you will explore the Cyber Kill Chain framework, how cybersecurity professionals use it to prevent cyber-attacks, and how each stage can be aligned with penetration testing.

In this chapter, we will cover the following topics:

• Identifying threat actors and their intent
• Understanding what matters to threat actors
• Discovering cybersecurity terminologies
• Exploring the need for penetration testing and its phases
• Understanding penetration testing approaches
• Exploring hacking phases
• Understanding the Cyber Kill Chain framework

I hope you're as excited as I am to begin this journey. Let's dive in!