What this book covers

Chapter 1, Open Source Intelligence, provides a look at how to use publicly available resources such as Google to gather surprisingly useful information about a target.

Chapter 2, Bypassing Network Access Control, examines how network access is sometimes controlled based on how a system “appears,” and how we can tweak that appearance.

Chapter 3, Sniffing and Spoofing, explores the world of intercepting data off the wire (or out of the air) and manipulating data on the fly.

Chapter 4, Windows Passwords on the Network, reviews how Windows manages passwords during authentication over the network and how to intercept these attempts.

Chapter 5, Assessing Network Security, provides a crash course in network analysis and vulnerability assessment with Nmap, further covering intercepting data to inject our own in its place, and providing a review of IPv6 in today’s still-IPv4-dominant world.

Chapter 6, Cryptography and the Penetration Tester, looks at attacks that exploit weaknesses in cryptographic implementations.

Chapter 7, Advanced Exploitation with Metasploit, dives into the inner workings of Metasploit, as well as how to use Metasploit-generated payloads with other excellent tools, such as Shellter.

Chapter 8, Python Fundamentals, provides a crash course in Python from a pen tester’s perspective. This foundation is useful later in the book.

Chapter 9, PowerShell Fundamentals, also provides a crash course in a scripting language: PowerShell. This foundation is also useful in later labs.

Chapter 10, Shellcoding – The Stack, provides a review of how the stack works and how it can be manipulated.

Chapter 11, Shellcoding – Bypassing Protections, jumping off from the stack foundation in Chapter 10, Shellcoding – The Stack, explores how defenders have responded and how attacks such as return-oriented programming had to adapt to these responses.

Chapter 12, Shellcoding – Evading Antivirus, explores how antimalware can be confused when we live off the land with PowerShell, and an alternative to Shellter’s dynamic injection approach: cave jumping.

Chapter 13, Windows Kernel Security, provides a foundation in how kernel weaknesses are found and an exploration of real-world examples.

Chapter 14, Fuzzing Techniques, provides a practical review of the fuzzing methodology and how to inform exploit development with the results.

Chapter 15, Going Beyond the Foothold, looks at the first steps after we finally establish our initial foothold in our target, including how to conduct recon and further attacks from that privileged position.

Chapter 16, Escalating Privileges, provides a more in-depth look at how we can escalate privileges locally with Metasploit, as well as finding and using passwords – even when we don’t know what the password is.

Chapter 17, Maintaining Access, takes a look at how we can persist once we’ve made it inside the target environment, both from scratch with the target’s built-in abilities and with specialized tools for building reboot-resistant access.

Answers can be used to check your knowledge by providing the answers to the quizzes at the end of each chapter.