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
Other Books You May Enjoy
16
Index

Preface

This book is about the use of Kali Linux in performing penetration tests against networks, systems, and applications. A penetration test simulates an attack against a network or a system by a malicious outsider or insider. Unlike a vulnerability assessment, penetration testing is designed to include the exploitation phase. Therefore, it proves that the exploit is present and that the system is at risk of being compromised if not acted upon.

Throughout this book, we will refer to penetration testers, attackers, pentesters, and hackers interchangeably as they use the same techniques and tools to assess the security of networks and data systems. The only difference between them is their end objective—infiltrating a secure data network or a data breach.

Readers must be aware that it is illegal to knowingly/intentionally scan or access a protected computer or network without explicit approval.

In short, this book will take you through a journey of a penetration tester with many proven techniques to defeat the latest defenses on a network using Kali Linux. From selecting the most effective tools, to rapidly compromising network security to highlighting the techniques used to avoid detection.