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The Ultimate Kali Linux Book

You're reading from   The Ultimate Kali Linux Book Harness Nmap, Metasploit, Aircrack-ng, and Empire for cutting-edge pentesting

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Product type Paperback
Published in Apr 2024
Publisher Packt
ISBN-13 9781835085806
Length 828 pages
Edition 3rd Edition
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Author (1):
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Glen D. Singh Glen D. Singh
Author Profile Icon Glen D. Singh
Glen D. Singh
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Toc

Table of Contents (21) Chapters Close

Preface 1. Introduction to Ethical Hacking 2. Building a Penetration Testing Lab FREE CHAPTER 3. Setting Up for Advanced Penetration Testing Techniques 4. Passive Reconnaissance 5. Exploring Open-Source Intelligence 6. Active Reconnaissance 7. Performing Vulnerability Assessments 8. Understanding Network Penetration Testing 9. Performing Network Penetration Testing 10. Post-Exploitation Techniques 11. Delving into Command and Control Tactics 12. Working with Active Directory Attacks 13. Advanced Active Directory Attacks 14. Advanced Wireless Penetration Testing 15. Social Engineering Attacks 16. Understanding Website Application Security 17. Advanced Website Penetration Testing 18. Best Practices for the Real World 19. Index
Appendix

Exploring the importance of penetration testing

Each day, cybersecurity professionals are in a race against time with threat actors in discovering vulnerabilities in systems and networks. Imagine that threat actors are able to exploit a security vulnerability on a targeted system before a cybersecurity professional can find it and implement security controls and countermeasures to mitigate the threat. The longer cybersecurity professionals take to identify hidden security flaws in systems, the more time threat actors have to improve their cyber operations, exploit their targets, and expand their foothold on a compromised network. This would leave the cybersecurity professional to perform incident handling and response to contain and eradicate the threat and recover any compromised systems back to an acceptable working state.

Organizations are realizing the need to hire white hat hackers such as ethical hackers and penetration testers with the skills needed to simulate real-world cyber-attacks on their systems and networks to discover and exploit hidden vulnerabilities and better understand the TTPs of cyber criminals. Furthermore, penetration testing helps organizations improve their incident response plans, enhances their security posture, and creates a culture of continuous improvement in cybersecurity practices.

These techniques enable the ethical hacker and penetration tester to perform the same type of attacks as a real hacker; the difference is the penetration tester is hired by the organization and has been granted legal permission to conduct such intrusive security testing.

Note

Penetration testers usually have a strong understanding of computers, operating systems, networking, and programming, as well as how these technologies work together. Most importantly, you need creativity. Creative thinking enables a person to think outside the box, go beyond the intended uses of technologies, and find new and exciting ways to implement them.

At the end of the penetration test, both an executive and technical report are presented to the organization’s stakeholders detailing all the findings, such as vulnerabilities and how each weakness can be exploited. The reports also contain recommendations on how to mitigate and prevent a possible cyber-attack on each vulnerability found. This allows the organization to better understand what type of information and systems a hacker will discover if they are targeted and the countermeasures that are needed to reduce the risk of a future cyber-attack. Some organizations will even perform a second penetration test after implementing the recommendations outlined in the penetration test reports to determine whether all the vulnerabilities have been fixed, whether the security controls are working as expected to mitigate the threats, and whether the attack surface is reduced. By providing feedback to the organization’s security team, the interaction ensures that security vulnerabilities are better understood and the recommendations are feasible and effective within the context of the organization’s mission.

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