Book Image

Becoming the Hacker

By : Adrian Pruteanu
Book Image

Becoming the Hacker

By: Adrian Pruteanu

Overview of this book

Becoming the Hacker will teach you how to approach web penetration testing with an attacker's mindset. While testing web applications for performance is common, the ever-changing threat landscape makes security testing much more difficult for the defender. There are many web application tools that claim to provide a complete survey and defense against potential threats, but they must be analyzed in line with the security needs of each web application or service. We must understand how an attacker approaches a web application and the implications of breaching its defenses. Through the first part of the book, Adrian Pruteanu walks you through commonly encountered vulnerabilities and how to take advantage of them to achieve your goal. The latter part of the book shifts gears and puts the newly learned techniques into practice, going over scenarios where the target may be a popular content management system or a containerized application and its network. Becoming the Hacker is a clear guide to web application security from an attacker's point of view, from which both sides can benefit.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
Becoming the Hacker
Contributors
Preface
Index

Application assessment


Just as we've done with other applications, when we come across a WordPress or CMS instance, we have to do some reconnaissance: look for low-hanging fruit and try to understand what we're up against. There are a few tools to get us going and we will look at a common scenario where they can help us to identify issues and exploit them.

WPScan

The first thing attackers reach for when they encounter a WordPress CMS application is usually WPScan. It is a well-built and frequently updated tool used to discover vulnerabilities and even guess credentials.

WPScan has many useful features, including the following:

  • Plugin and theme enumeration:

    • Passive and active discovery

  • Username enumeration

  • Credential brute-forcing

  • Vulnerability scanning

A useful feature for assessments is the ability to pass all of its requests through a proxy, such as a local Burp Suite instance. This allows us to see the attack live and replay some of the payloads. During an engagement, this may be useful for recording...