Cybersecurity Umbrella

Penetration Testing

Penetration testing, or pen testing, is a simulated cyberattack conducted on your computer system to identify vulnerabilities and test breach security. It provides valuable insights into potential points of exploitation and assesses the effectiveness of your security measures.

Regular pen testing allows businesses to receive unbiased feedback from experts, helping them strengthen their security processes. While it may require time and investment, pen testing is a crucial step in preventing costly and harmful data breaches.

1. Planning and reconnaissance

The first stage involves:

Defining the scope and goals of a pen test, including the systems to be tested and the testing methods.
Gathering intelligence (e.g., network and domain names, mail server) to understand target operations and vulnerabilities in pen testing.

2. Scanning

In pen testing, the next step is to understand how the target application responds to intrusion attempts. This is achieved through two methods:

Static analysis – This involves inspecting the application's code to predict its behavior during runtime. Tools used for static analysis can scan the entire code in a single pass.
Dynamic analysis – This involves inspecting the application's code while it is running. This method provides a real-time view of the application's performance and is a more practical approach to scanning.

3. Gaining Access

In this stage of pen testing, web application attacks are used to identify vulnerabilities in the target.

Common attacks include cross-site scripting, SQL injection, and backdoors.
Testers attempt to exploit these vulnerabilities by escalating privileges, stealing data, intercepting traffic, and more, to assess the potential damage they can inflict.

4. Maintaining access

5. Covering Tracks

To maintain anonymity, the attacker needs to remove any evidence of their presence, including compromising the victim system, collected data, and log events.
After successfully exploiting one vulnerability, the attacker can potentially access other machines, leading to a repeated cycle of identifying new vulnerabilities and exploiting them. This iterative process is commonly known as pivoting.

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Penetration Testing

1. Planning and reconnaissance

Defining the scope and goals of a pen test, including the systems to be tested and the testing methods.

Gathering intelligence (e.g., network and domain names, mail server) to understand target operations and vulnerabilities in pen testing.

2. Scanning

Static analysis – This involves inspecting the application's code to predict its behavior during runtime. Tools used for static analysis can scan the entire code in a single pass.

Dynamic analysis – This involves inspecting the application's code while it is running. This method provides a real-time view of the application's performance and is a more practical approach to scanning.

3. Gaining Access

Common attacks include cross-site scripting, SQL injection, and backdoors.

Testers attempt to exploit these vulnerabilities by escalating privileges, stealing data, intercepting traffic, and more, to assess the potential damage they can inflict.

4. Maintaining access

The objective of this stage is to determine if the identified vulnerability can be exploited to establish a long-term presence in the compromised system.

This mimics the tactics of advanced persistent threats (APTs) that persist within a system for extended periods to clandestinely access an organization's highly sensitive data.

5. Covering Tracks

To maintain anonymity, the attacker needs to remove any evidence of their presence, including compromising the victim system, collected data, and log events.

After successfully exploiting one vulnerability, the attacker can potentially access other machines, leading to a repeated cycle of identifying new vulnerabilities and exploiting them. This iterative process is commonly known as pivoting.