Chapter 7: Hunting for Credentials

Pen testers are always looking for ways to get their hands-on clear text credentials and access tokens. After compromising assets, the machines are looted for more credentials and the adventure continues. In the next two chapters, we will provide techniques that can be used for credential hunting. We will look at various aspects across operating systems, so we will be switching between technologies quite a bit. Hopefully, there will be something interesting for you to learn about or something that will help you explore further.

By the end of this chapter, you will have a solid understanding regarding the basic techniques for credential hunting and how they can be leveraged across operating system stacks. We will also understand the importance of hunting for ciphertext and hashes. I have not invented all these techniques; rather, this is a compilation of a number of interesting and effective techniques that I have used in the past. I'm certain...