Reconnaissance

From: What is penetration testing (accessed by Benjamin Hobbs on 9/5/2023)

What is Penetration Testing?

• A penetration test ("pen test" for short) is a simulated cyber attack against a computer system or network to determine exploitable vulnerabilities.

  • Pen testing can involve the attempted breaching of any number of application systems (APIs, frontend/backend servers, components, etc.)

  Stages of a pen test

  1. Planning and Reconnaissance

     • Test goals are defined and intelligence is gathered
       • Identify what the scope of the test is, including systems in play, testing methods allowed, knowledge possessed upfront, etc.
       • Conduct recon to assess systems and identify vulns

  2. Scanning *

  3. Gaining Access (Initial Entry) *

  4. Maintaining Access (Persistence) *

  5. Analysis and Results () *

Questions for further understanding

1. How are the stages of a pen test very similar to those of the Cyber Kill Chain?

• To begin with, they are essentially the same thing, except with a pen test- it is understood that no ill-effect will befall the company.
• Also they both begin with trying to find out as much about the system to be attacked/tested as possible.
• Although there is no weaponization (maybe- depending on the rules of the pen test) and delivery of a payload, pen testers will likely discover how this COULD have been achieved to detail in their report.
• As the last stage in the Cyber Kill Chain would be conducting "Actions on Objectives", the pen test can capture what they were able to achieve.

2. Your manager has asked you to explain the benefits of a pentest to the company’s leadership. How would you lead this conversation?

• It's simple. If you think that your systems are secure...running a pen test will definitely let you know for sure whether that is true (from the attacker's perspective.)

Addtional Resources

Videos Watch hackers break into the US power grid

Bookmark and Review An Introduction To Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) Gathering