Book Image

Mastering Kali Linux for Advanced Penetration Testing – Fourth Edition - Fourth Edition

By : Vijay Kumar Velu
Book Image

Mastering Kali Linux for Advanced Penetration Testing – Fourth Edition - Fourth Edition

By: Vijay Kumar Velu

Overview of this book

Remote working has given hackers plenty of opportunities as more confidential information is shared over the internet than ever before. In this new edition of Mastering Kali Linux for Advanced Penetration Testing, you’ll learn an offensive approach to enhance your penetration testing skills by testing the sophisticated tactics employed by real hackers. You’ll go through laboratory integration to cloud services so that you learn another dimension of exploitation that is typically forgotten during a penetration test. You'll explore different ways of installing and running Kali Linux in a VM and containerized environment and deploying vulnerable cloud services on AWS using containers, exploiting misconfigured S3 buckets to gain access to EC2 instances. This book delves into passive and active reconnaissance, from obtaining user information to large-scale port scanning. Building on this, different vulnerability assessments are explored, including threat modeling. See how hackers use lateral movement, privilege escalation, and command and control (C2) on compromised systems. By the end of this book, you’ll have explored many advanced pentesting approaches and hacking techniques employed on networks, IoT, embedded peripheral devices, and radio frequencies.
Table of Contents (17 chapters)
15
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16
Index

Hiding executables and obfuscating the attacker’s URL

As shown in the previous examples, there are two keys to successfully launching a social engineering attack. The first is to obtain the information needed to make it work: usernames, business information, and supporting details about networks, systems, and applications. The majority of the effort, however, is focused on the second aspect: crafting the attack to entice the target into opening an executable or clicking on a link.

Several attacks produce modules that require the victim to execute them in order for the attack to succeed. Unfortunately, users are increasingly wary about executing unknown software. There are, however, some ways to increase the possibility of successful attack execution, including the following:

  • Launch an attack from a system that is known and trusted by the intended victim or spoof the source of the attack. If the attack appears to originate from the help desk or IT support and...