Penetration Testing

Mr. Robot Walkthrough (Vulnhub)

Anyone who is inspired to partake in a challenging course such as the Offensive Security Certified Professional (OSCP), or Licensed Penetration Tester-Master (LPT (Master)), knows that practice makes you a better hacker. Vulnhub is a great resource to find purpose-built virtual machine images to practice on. This image is based on a popular TV show, and we are going to walk through exploiting it together.

sqlmap: Sucking Your Whole Database Through a Tiny Little Straw

Hacking seemed like an arcane art, only mastered by those willing to spend years pouring over dusty tomes of x86 assembly language manuals and protocol RFCs.  It did not occur to us that many of the vulnerabilities could be exploited by anyone with basic web development coding skills and the willingness to spend a few hours on research. One of these mysterious incantations was the dreaded “SQL Injection” attack.  What exactly could one do with a SQL Injection attack, anyway?  No one was quite sure, but since our software was going into a secure military installation, we were pretty sure that the perimeter defenses would prevent anyone from harming it.

Hacking Humans with Nanotechnology

Hacking humans with nanotechnology may sound like a concept from a futuristic science fiction novel or movie, but the truth is, it's not that far off and it could be the next big cyberthreat. If you thought data breaches involving your social security number or credit card information were scary, imagine the ramifications nanotechnology hacking.

A Penetration Testing Career – Do You Have What It Takes?

Penetration testing, also known as ethical hacking, is one of the hottest jobs in tech today. What other career lets you pretend you're in The Matrix, working your way into systems like a top-level hacker, all without breaking any laws. Oh, and you're getting paid for it.With a real-world penetration testing job, though, you're not just playing at hacking into systems. You actually are hacking into systems, and your employer's very existence may depend on your ability to do it.

Top Penetration Testing Certifications

Penetration testing, also known as pen testing, is an ethical hacking tactic that helps companies protect themselves. Penetration testers try to break into clients' digital systems to find weaknesses before a black hat hacker does. This is a growing field as companies seek to prevent the high profile data breaches that have happened in recent years. The top penetration testing certifications can help you get into this field.

The History of Penetration Testing

Penetration testing has been around since human beings first began trying to understand their enemies' thought processes. Ancient armies all over the world conducted mock battles and games to figure out how other armies might undermine their strategies or get around their forces. This continued for centuries upon centuries until, inevitably, the tech world got in on the act.

Web Application Penetration Testing: Why It’s Necessary and What You Need to Know

Web applications are the critical systems of many networks. They store, process, and transmit data. They are also vulnerable to hackers who can find vulnerabilities. So, the question becomes how secure is your network? And how comprehensively has it been tested?

Who Needs Pen Testing? 3 Industries that Rely on It

Penetration testing - sometimes called white-hat hacking - is how companies manage risk, increase business continuity, and protect clients from data breaches. In highly regulated industries such as healthcare, banking, and service industries, it also helps companies stay compliant. SOC 2, HIPAA, and PCI DSS are three of the main regulations that require penetration testing.

Two Keys to Stopping Cyber Attacks 



Brute Forcing a Login Page with Burp Suite

The purpose of this blog is to demonstrate how to brute force a login page using Burp Suite. There are other brute force tools such as Hydra and Ncrack. Although both are great tools, Burp Suite is more suitable for brute forcing a web application login page, whereas Hydra and Ncrack are more suitable for other protocols such as SSH and RDP.

Empire: A PowerShell Post-Exploitation Tool

This blog demonstrates how to download PowerShell Empire, a post-exploitation tool, in Kali Linux, create a script, make a connection back to your machine from the victim machine without Windows Defender blocking it, elevate privileges, and extract password hashes using Mimikatz. It is a versatile and useful tool that every penetration tester should have in their arsenal.

Offline Password Cracking: The Attack and the Best Defense

Offline Password Cracking is an attempt to recover one or more passwords from a password storage file that has been recovered from a target system.  Typically, this would be the Security Account Manager (SAM) file on Windows, or the /etc/shadow file on Linux.  In most cases, Offline Password Cracking will require that an attacker has already attained administrator / root level privileges on the system to get to the storage mechanism. 

Aviation Cybersecurity - Hacking Aircraft

This blog is an excerpt from the Atlantic Council report Aviation Cybersecurity - Finding Lift, Minimizing Drag by Pete Cooper. Alpine's Christian Espinosa, an expert on penetration testing and risk assessments of commercial aircraft, contributed to this report via an interview and panel discussion.

Review: EC-Council’s Licensed Penetration Tester (Master) Exam 2.0: The World’s First Proctored, Hands-On Pentesting Examination

The most significant difference with the new exam format is that it is proctored.  This means that you are being watched over your webcam for the entire period of the session.  Proctoring a five-day exam is impractical, so the exam was split into three six-hour sessions.  Each six-hour session consists of three individual “challenges”.  Each challenge involves recovering the contents of a secret file, but some challenges will require hacking more than one machine.  You enter the contents of the file into a web page and submit it when you are done with the session.  You must complete at least one challenge per session, and you must complete at least five out of the nine sessions to pass the exam.

Top 10 Considerations for Choosing a Penetration Testing Vendor

You cannot fix what you do not know. A penetration test strengthens your defenses by revealing your weaknesses and recommending prioritized fix actions.This article contains ten items you should consider when selecting an organization to perform a penetration test against your environment.

OSCP vs LPT (Master): A Comparison by Someone with Both

The OSCP certification is great for individuals with several years of experience in system administration, networking, or software development, who wish to learn “elite hacking skills.” The LPT (Master) is great for those who want to pursue penetration testing as a career and who are looking for a certification that demonstrates that they can complete a realistic penetration test simulation on their own.

Online Password Cracking: The Attack and the Best Defense Against It

Online password cracking has advantages and disadvantages.  It is effective if executed properly. There are numerous defenses to prevent attackers from cracking your passwords.

Black Box Penetration Test Advantages

Black Box Penetration Testing tests a target with little to no prior knowledge about the target environment. Despite the best efforts of vulnerability scanning tools, they often miss critical vulnerabilities and major issues. These missed vulnerabilities can be exploited by attackers to gain full control of your environment. A Black Box Penetration Test identifies additional vulnerabilities and security issues. If minimizing cybersecurity risk is a goal, both a vulnerability scan and a Black Box Penetration Test are recommended.