To get the most out of this book

In order to practice the material presented in this book, you will need virtualization tools such as VMware or VirtualBox.

You will need to download and configure the Kali Linux operating system and its suite of tools. To ensure that it is up to date and that you have all of the tools, you will need an internet connection.

Sadly, not all of the tools on the Kali Linux system will be addressed, since there are just too many of them. The focus of this book is not to overwhelm you with all of the tools and options, but to provide an approach for testing that will give you the opportunity to learn and incorporate new tools as your experiences and knowledge increases over time.

Although most of the examples from this book focus on Microsoft Windows, the methodology and most of the tools are transferable to other operating systems, such as Linux and the other flavors of Unix.

Finally, this book applies Kali to complete the attacker's kill-chain against target systems. For this, you will need a target operating system. Many of the examples in the book use Microsoft Windows 7 and Windows 2008 R2.

Download the example code files

You can download the example code files for this book from your account at www.packt.com. If you purchased this book elsewhere, you can visit www.packt.com/support and register to have the files emailed directly to you.

You can download the code files by following these steps:

1. Log in or register at www.packt.com.
2. Select the SUPPORT tab.
3. Click on Code Downloads & Errata.
4. Enter the name of the book in the Search box and follow the onscreen instructions.

Once the file is downloaded, please make sure that you unzip or extract the folder using the latest version of:

• WinRAR/7-Zip for Windows
• Zipeg/iZip/UnRarX for Mac
• 7-Zip/PeaZip for Linux

The code bundle for the book is also hosted on GitHub at https://github.com/PacktPublishing/Mastering-Kali-Linux-for-Advanced-Penetration-Testing-Third-Edition. In case there's an update to the code, it will be updated on the existing GitHub repository.

We also have other code bundles from our rich catalog of books and videos available at https://github.com/PacktPublishing/. Check them out!

Download the color images

We also provide a PDF file that has color images of the screenshots/diagrams used in this book. You can download it here: http://www.packtpub.com/sites/default/files/downloads/9781789340563_ColorImages.pdf.

Conventions used

There are a number of text conventions used throughout this book.

CodeInText: Indicates code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles. Here is an example: "For example, we have used the netcat command."

A block of code is set as follows:

<!DOCTYPE foo [ <!ENTITY Variable "hello" > ]><somexml><message>&Variable;</message></somexml>

Any command-line input or output is written as follows:

chmod 600 privatekey.pem
ssh -i privatekey.pem ec2-user@amazon-dns-ip

Bold: Indicates a new term, an important word, or words that you see onscreen. For example, words in menus or dialog boxes appear in the text like this. Here is an example: "Right-click on the folder and select the Sharing tab. From this menu, select Share."

Warnings or important notes appear like this.

Tips and tricks appear like this.