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Becoming the Hacker
Becoming the Hacker

Becoming the Hacker: The Playbook for Getting Inside the Mind of the Attacker

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Profile Icon Adrian Pruteanu
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Paperback Jan 2019 404 pages 1st Edition
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Arrow left icon
Profile Icon Adrian Pruteanu
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Paperback Jan 2019 404 pages 1st Edition
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Becoming the Hacker

Chapter 2. Efficient Discovery

Content discovery and information gathering are typically the first steps when attacking an application. The goal is to figure out as much as possible about the application in the quickest manner possible. Time is a luxury we don't have and we must make the most of our limited resources.

Efficiency can also help us to remain a bit quieter when attacking applications. Smart wordlists will reduce the number of requests we make to the server and return results faster. This isn't a silver bullet, but it's a good place to start.

In this chapter, we will cover the following topics:

  • The different types of penetration testing engagements
  • Target mapping with various network and web scanners
  • Efficient brute-forcing techniques
  • Polyglot payloads

Types of assessments

Depending on the agreement with the client prior to the engagement, you may have some of the information required, a lot of information, or no information whatsoever. White-box testing allows for a thorough examination of the application. In this case, the attackers have essentially the same access as the developer. They not only have authenticated access to the application, but also its source code, any design documents, and anything else they'll need.

White-box testing is typically conducted by internal teams and it is fairly time-consuming. A tester is provided with any information they require to fully assess the application or infrastructure. The benefit of providing testers with this level of knowledge is that they will be able to look at every bit of an application and check for vulnerabilities. This is a luxury that external attackers do not have, but it does make efficient use of limited time and resources during an engagement.

Gray-box...

Target mapping

The traditional nmap of the entire port range, with service discovery, is always a good place to start when gathering information on a target. Nmap is the network scanning tool of choice and has been for many years. It is still very powerful and very relevant. It is available on most platforms, including Kali, BlackArch, and even Windows.

Metasploit Framework (MSF) is a penetration testing framework commonly used by security professionals. Besides being a fantastic collection of easy-to-deliver exploits, it can also help to organize engagements. For target mapping specifically, you can leverage the workspace feature and neatly store your Nmap scan results in a database.

If the Kali Linux instance is fresh or Metasploit was recently installed, the database may need a kick to get it going.

In the Kali console prompt, start the PostgreSQL service using the service command. If successful, there should be no message returned:

root@kali:~# service postgresql start
root...

Efficient brute-forcing

A brute-force attack typically involves a barrage of requests, or guesses, to gain access or reveal information that may be otherwise hidden. We may brute-force a login form on an administrative panel in order to look for commonly used passwords or usernames. We may also brute-force a web application's root directory looking for common misconfiguration and misplaced sensitive files.

Many successful engagements were made so by weak credentials or application misconfiguration. Brute-forcing can help to reveal information that may have been obscured, or can grant access to a database because the developer forgot to change the default credentials.

There are obvious challenges to brute-forcing. Primarily, it is time-consuming and can be very noisy. Brute-forcing a web service, for example, with the infamous rockyou.txt wordlist will no doubt wake up your friendly neighborhood security operations center (SOC) analyst and may put an end to your activities early...

Polyglot payloads

A polyglot payload is defined as a piece of code that can be executed in multiple contexts in the application. These types of payloads are popular with attackers because they can quickly test an application's input controls for any weaknesses, with minimal noise.

In a complex application, user input can travel through many checkpoints—from the URL through a filter, into a database, and back out to a decoder, before being displayed to the user, as illustrated in the following figure:

Polyglot payloads

Figure 2.29: Typical data flow from user to application

Any one of the steps along the way can alter or block the payload, which may make it more difficult to confirm the existence of a vulnerability in the application. A polyglot payload will attempt to exploit an injection vulnerability by combining multiple methods for executing code in the same stream. This attempts to exploit weaknesses in the application payload filtering, increasing the chance that at least one portion...

Resources

Consult the following resources for more information on penetration testing tools and techniques:

Exercises

Complete the following exercises:

  1. Create a copy of the SecLists and FuzzDB repositories in your tools folder and study the available wordlists
  2. Download and compile Gobuster

Summary

In this chapter, we looked at improving your efficiency for gathering information on a target, and covered several ways to do this. If stealth is paramount during an engagement, efficient content discovery can also reduce the chance that the blue team will notice the attack.

Time-tested tools, such as Nmap and Nikto, can give us a head start, while WPScan and CMSmap can hammer away at complex CMS that are frequently misconfigured and seldom updated. For larger networks, masscan can quickly identify interesting ports, such as those related to web applications, allowing for more specialized tools, such as WhatWeb and WPScan, to do their job faster.

Web content and vulnerability discovery scans with Burp or ZAP can be improved with proper wordlists from repositories, such as SecLists and FuzzDB. These collections of known and interesting URLs, usernames, passwords, and fuzzing payloads can greatly improve scan success and efficiency.

In the next chapter, we will look at how...

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Key benefits

  • Builds on books and courses on penetration testing for beginners
  • Covers both attack and defense perspectives
  • Examines which tool to deploy to suit different applications and situations

Description

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.

Who is this book for?

The reader should have basic security experience, for example, through running a network or encountering security issues during application development. Formal education in security is useful, but not required. This title is suitable for people with at least two years of experience in development, network management, or DevOps, or with an established interest in security.

What you will learn

  • Study the mindset of an attacker
  • Adopt defensive strategies
  • Classify and plan for standard web application security threats
  • Prepare to combat standard system security problems
  • Defend WordPress and mobile applications
  • Use security tools and plan for defense against remote execution
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Publication date : Jan 31, 2019
Length: 404 pages
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Length: 404 pages
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ISBN-13 : 9781788627962
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Table of Contents

16 Chapters
1. Introduction to Attacking Web Applications Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
2. Efficient Discovery Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
3. Low-Hanging Fruit Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
4. Advanced Brute-forcing Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
5. File Inclusion Attacks Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
6. Out-of-Band Exploitation Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
7. Automated Testing Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
8. Bad Serialization Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
9. Practical Client-Side Attacks Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
10. Practical Server-Side Attacks Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
11. Attacking APIs Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
12. Attacking CMS Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
13. Breaking Containers Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Other Books You May Enjoy Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Leave a review - let other readers know what you think Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Index Chevron down icon Chevron up icon

Customer reviews

Rating distribution
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon 5
(1 Ratings)
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1 star 0%
Michael Hixon Mar 04, 2019
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon 5
What I liked about this book is it takes the reader beyond the typical scan, find service, find vuln, exploit process. What it adds are scenarios such as linking vulnerabilities together to reach the desired outcome. The book is an easy and enjoyable read.
Amazon Verified review Amazon
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