Kali Linux - An Ethical Hacker's Cookbook - Second Edition: Practical recipes that combine strategies, attacks, and tools for advanced penetration testing, 2nd Edition

By Himanshu Sharma

Discover end-to-end penetration testing solutions to enhance your ethical hacking skills

Key Features

• Practical recipes to conduct effective penetration testing using the latest version of Kali Linux
• Leverage tools like Metasploit, Wireshark, Nmap, and more to detect vulnerabilities with ease
• Confidently perform networking and application attacks using task-oriented recipes

Book Description

Many organizations have been affected by recent cyber events. At the current rate of hacking, it has become more important than ever to pentest your environment in order to ensure advanced-level security. This book is packed with practical recipes that will quickly get you started with Kali Linux (version 2018.4 / 2019), in addition to covering the core functionalities.

The book will get you off to a strong start by introducing you to the installation and configuration of Kali Linux, which will help you to perform your tests. You will also learn how to plan attack strategies and perform web application exploitation using tools such as Burp and JexBoss. As you progress, you will get to grips with performing network exploitation using Metasploit, Sparta, and Wireshark. The book will also help you delve into the technique of carrying out wireless and password attacks using tools such as Patator, John the Ripper, and airoscript-ng. Later chapters will draw focus to the wide range of tools that help in forensics investigations and incident response mechanisms. As you wrap up the concluding chapters, you will learn to create an optimum quality pentest report.

By the end of this book, you will be equipped with the knowledge you need to conduct advanced penetration testing, thanks to the book’s crisp and task-oriented recipes.

What you will learn

• Learn how to install, set up and customize Kali for pentesting on multiple platforms
• Pentest routers and embedded devices
• Get insights into fiddling around with software-defined radio
• Pwn and escalate through a corporate network
• Write good quality security reports
• Explore digital forensics and memory analysis with Kali Linux

Who this book is for

If you are an IT security professional, pentester, or security analyst who wants to conduct advanced penetration testing techniques, then this book is for you. Basic knowledge of Kali Linux is assumed.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Packt Publishing
• Release date: Mar 29, 2019
• ISBN: 9781789953701

Book preview

Kali Linux - An Ethical Hacker's Cookbook, Second Edition

Kali Linux - An Ethical Hacker's Cookbook

Second Edition

Practical recipes that combine strategies, attacks, and tools for advanced penetration testing

Himanshu Sharma

BIRMINGHAM - MUMBAI

Kali Linux - An Ethical Hacker's Cookbook Second Edition

Copyright © 2019 Packt Publishing

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.

Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the author, nor Packt Publishing or its dealers and distributors, will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to have been caused directly or indirectly by this book.

Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all of the companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.

Commissioning Editor: Vijin Boricha

Acquisition Editor: Rohit Rajkumar

Content Development Editor: Ronn Kurien

Technical Editor: Prachi Sawant

Copy Editor: Safis Editing

Project Coordinator: Jagdish Prabhu

Proofreader: Safis Editing

Indexer: Manju Arasan

Graphics: Tom Scaria

Production Coordinator: Jayalaxmi Raja

First published: October 2017

Second edition: March 2019

Production reference: 1290319

Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.

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ISBN 978-1-78995-230-8

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Contributors

About the author

Himanshu Sharma has been active in the field of bug bounty since 2009, and has been listed in Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Adobe, Uber, AT&T, Avira, and many more with hall of fame listings as proof.

He has been a speaker at multiple international conferences, including Botconf '13, Confidence 2018, RSA Asia Pacific and Japan '18, and Hack In The Box 2019. He also spoke at the IEEE conference in California and Malaysia, as well as for TedX.

Currently, he is the cofounder of BugsBounty, a crowd-sourced security platform for ethical hackers and companies interested in cyber services. He has also authored the following books: Kali Linux – An Ethical Hacker's Cookbook, and Hands-On Red Team Tactics.

About the reviewers

Bhargav Tandel has over 7 years' experience in information security with companies including Reliance jio, Vodafone, and Wipro. His core expertise and passions are vulnerability assessment, penetration testing, Red Team, ethical hacking, and information security. He is currently pursuing the OSCP certification. He has the ability to solve complex problems involving a wide variety of information systems, work independently on large-scale projects, and thrive under pressure in fast-paced environments, all while directing multiple projects from concept to implementation.

I would like to thank my family and friends, who have always stood by me. My friends, Jigar Tank and Utkarsh Bhatt, have always been there for me. I would also like to thank Rakesh Dwivedi for giving me a reason to continue learning and growing.

Kunal Sehgal has been heading critical cybersecurity roles for financial organizations, for over 15 years now. He is an avid blogger and a regular speaker on cyber-related topics across Asia.

He also holds a bachelor's degree in computer applications from Panjab University, and a postgraduate diploma from Georgian College in cyberspace security. He holds numerous cyber certifications, including Certified Information Systems Auditor (CISA), Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP), Certified Information Security Manager (CISM), Tenable Certified Nessus Auditor (TCNA), Certificate of Cloud Security Knowledge (CCSK), ISO 27001 Lead Auditor, Offensive Security Certified Professional (OSCP), and CompTIA Security+.

Dedicated to my darling daughter.

Shivanand Persad has a master's in business administration from the Australian Institute of Business, and a bachelor of science in electrical and computer engineering from the University of the West Indies. He possesses a wide variety of specializations, including controls and instrumentation systems, wireless and wired communication systems, strategic management, and business process re-engineering. With over a decade of experience across multiple engineering disciplines, and a lengthy tenure with one of the largest ISPs in the Caribbean, he continues to be passionate about technology and its continuous development. When he's not reading everything in sight, he enjoys archery, martial arts, biking, and tinkering.

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Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright and Credits

Kali Linux - An Ethical Hacker's Cookbook Second Edition

About Packt

Why subscribe?

Packt.com

Contributors

About the author

About the reviewers

Packt is searching for authors like you

Preface

Who this book is for

What this book covers

To get the most out of this book

Download the color images

Conventions used

Sections

Getting ready

How to do it…

How it works…

There's more…

See also

Get in touch

Reviews

Disclaimer

Kali - An Introduction

Configuring Kali Linux

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

Configuring the Xfce environment

How to do it...

Configuring the MATE environment

How to do it...

Configuring the LXDE environment

How to do it...

Configuring the E17 environment

How to do it...

Configuring the KDE environment

How to do it...

Prepping with custom tools

Getting ready

How to do it...

Aquatone

Subfinder

There's more...

Zone Walking using DNSRecon

Getting ready

How to do it...

There's more...

Setting up I2P for anonymity

How to do it...

There's more...

Pentesting VPN's ike-scan

Getting ready

How to do it...

Cracking the PSK

There's more...

Setting up proxychains

How to do it...

Using proxychains with Tor

Going on a hunt with Routerhunter

Getting ready

How to do it...

Gathering Intel and Planning Attack Strategies

Getting a list of subdomains

How to do it...

Using Shodan for fun and profit

Getting ready

How to do it...

Shodan Honeyscore

How to do it...

Shodan plugins

How to do it...

Censys

How to do it...

See also

Using Nmap to find open ports

How to do it...

Using scripts

See also

Bypassing firewalls with Nmap

How to do it...

TCP ACK scan (-sA)

TCP Window scan (-sW)

Idle scan

How it works...

Searching for open directories using GoBuster

How to do it...

Hunting for SSL flaws

How to do it...

See also

Automating brute force with BruteSpray

How to do it...

Digging deep with TheHarvester

How to do it...

How it works...

Finding technology behind webapps using WhatWeb

How to do it...

Scanning IPs with masscan

How to do it...

Finding origin servers with CloudBunny

How to do it...

Sniffing around with Kismet

How to do it...

See also

Testing routers with Firewalk

How to do it...

How it works...

Vulnerability Assessment - Poking for Holes

Using the infamous Burp

How to do it...

Exploiting WSDLs with Wsdler

How to do it...

Using Intruder

How to do it...

Using golismero

How to do it...

See also

Exploring Searchsploit

How to do it...

Exploiting routers with routersploit

Getting ready

How to do it...

Using Metasploit

How to do it...

Automating Metasploit

How to do it...

Writing a custom resource script

How to do it...

See also

Setting up a database in Metasploit

How to do it...

Generating payloads with MSFPC

How to do it...

Emulating threats with Cobalt Strike

Getting ready

How to do it...

There's more...

Web App Exploitation - Beyond OWASP Top 10

Exploiting XSS with XSS Validator

Getting ready

How to do it...

Injection attacks with sqlmap

How to do it...

See also

Owning all .svn and .git repositories

How to do it...

Winning race conditions

How to do it...

See also

Exploiting XXEs

How to do it...

See also

Exploiting Jboss with JexBoss

How to do it...

Exploiting PHP Object Injection

How to do it...

See also

Automating vulnerability detection using RapidScan

Getting ready

How to do it...

Backdoors using meterpreter

How to do it...

See also

Backdoors using webshells

How to do it...

Network Exploitation

Introduction

MITM with hamster and ferret

Getting ready

How to do it...

Exploring the msfconsole

How to do it...

Railgun in Metasploit

How to do it...

There's more...

See also 

Using the paranoid meterpreter

How to do it...

There's more...

The tale of a bleeding heart

How to do it...

Exploiting Redis

How to do it...

Saying no to SQL – owning MongoDBs

Getting ready

How to do it...

Hacking embedded devices

How to do it...

Exploiting Elasticsearch

How to do it...

See also

Good old Wireshark

Getting ready

How to do it...

See also

This is Sparta

Getting ready

How to do it...

Exploiting Jenkins

How to do it...

See also

Shellver – reverse shell cheatsheet

Getting ready

How to do it...

Generating payloads with MSFvenom Payload Creator (MSFPC)

How to do it...

Wireless Attacks - Getting Past Aircrack-ng

The good old Aircrack

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

Hands-on with Gerix

Getting ready

How to do it...

Dealing with WPAs

How to do it...

Owning employee accounts with Ghost Phisher

How to do it...

Pixie dust attack

Getting ready

How to do it...

See also

Setting up rogue access points with WiFi-Pumpkin

Getting ready

How to do it...

See also

Using Airgeddon for Wi-Fi attacks

How to do it...

See also

Password Attacks - The Fault in Their Stars

Identifying different types of hashes in the wild

How to do it...

See also

Hash-identifier to the rescue

How to do it...

Cracking with Patator

How to do it...

Playing with John the Ripper

How to do it...

See also

Johnny Bravo!

How to do it...

Using ceWL

How to do it...

Generating wordlists with crunch

How to do it...

Using Pipal

How to do it...

Have Shell, Now What?

Spawning a TTY shell

How to do it...

Looking for weaknesses

How to do it...

There's more...

Horizontal escalation

How to do it...

Vertical escalation

How to do it...

Node hopping – pivoting

How to do it...

There's more...

Privilege escalation on Windows

How to do it...

Pulling a plaintext password with Mimikatz

How to do it...

Dumping other saved passwords from the machine

How to do it...

Pivoting

How to do it...

Backdooring for persistance

How to do it...

Age of Empire

Getting ready

How to do it...

See also

Automating Active Directory (AD) exploitation with DeathStar

How to do it...

See also

Exfiltrating data through Dropbox

How to do it...

Data exfiltration using CloakifyFactory

How to do it...

Buffer Overflows

Exploiting stack-based buffer overflows

How to do it...

Exploiting buffer overflows on real software

Getting ready

How to do it...

SEH bypass

How to do it...

See also

Exploiting egg hunters

Getting ready

How to do it...

See also

An overview of ASLR and NX bypass

How to do it...

See also

Elementary, My Dear Watson - Digital Forensics

Using the volatility framework

Getting ready

How to do it...

 See also

Using Binwalk

How to do it...

See also

Capturing a forensic image with guymager

How to do it...

Playing with Software-Defined Radios

Radio-frequency scanners

Getting ready

How to do it...

Hands-on with the RTLSDR scanner

How to do it...

Playing around with gqrx

How to do it...

See also

Kalibrating your device for GSM tapping

How to do it...

See also

Decoding ADS-B messages with Dump1090

How to do it...

See also

Kali in Your Pocket - NetHunters and Raspberries

Installing Kali on Raspberry Pi

Getting ready

How to do it...

Installing NetHunter

Getting ready

How to do it...

Superman typing –  human interface device (HID) attacks

How to do it...

Can I charge my phone?

How to do it...

Setting up an evil access point

How to do it...

Writing Reports

Using Dradis

How to do it...

Using MagicTree

How to do it...

Using Serpico

Getting ready

How to do it...

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Preface

This book begins with the installation and configuration of Kali Linux to help you perform your tests. You will then learn about methods that will help you gather intel and perform web application exploitation using tools such as Burp. Moving forward, you will also learn how to perform network exploitation by generating payloads using MSFPC, Metasploit, and Cobalt Strike. Next, you will learn about monitoring and cracking wireless networks using Aircrack, Fluxion, and Wifi-Pumpkin. After that, you will learn how to analyze, generate, and crack passwords using tools such as Patator, John the Ripper, and ceWL. Later, you will also learn about some of the tools that help in forensic investigations. Lastly, you will learn how to create an optimum quality pentest report!

By the end of this book, you will know how to conduct advanced and efficient penetration testing activities thanks to the book's crisp and task-oriented recipes.

Who this book is for

This book is aimed at IT security professionals, pentesters, and security analysts who have some basic knowledge of Kali Linux and who want to exploit advanced penetration testing techniques.

What this book covers

Chapter 1, Kali - An Introduction, explains that while Kali is already pre-equipped with hundreds of amazing tools and utilities to help penetration testers around the globe perform their job efficiently, in this chapter, we will primarily cover some custom tweaks that can be used to facilitate an even better pentesting experience for the users.

Chapter 2, Gathering Intel and Plan Attack Strategies, dives a little deeper into the content from the previous chapter and looks at a number of different tools available for gathering intel on our target. We start by using the infamous tools of Kali Linux. Gathering