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

Exploring DNS reconnaissance

The DNS is an application layer protocol that allows a system such as a computer to resolve a hostname to an IP address. While there are so many devices on a network, especially on the internet, remembering the IP address of each web server is quite challenging. Using DNS, a system administrator can configure each device with both an IP address and a hostname. Using a hostname is a lot easier to remember, such as www.packtpub.com or www.google.com. However, do you know the IP addresses of the servers that are hosting those websites for Packt and Google? You probably don't, and that's OK because around the world on the internet, there is a hierarchy of special servers that contain the records of public hostnames and their IP addresses. These are known as DNS servers.

A DNS server is like a traditional telephone directory, with a list of people and their telephone numbers. On a DNS server, you can find records of the hostnames of people, as...