Penetration Testing with BackBox

An introductory guide to performing crucial penetration testing operations using Backbox

Overview

• Experience the real world of penetration testing with Backbox Linux using live, practical examples
• Gain an insight into auditing and penetration testing processes by reading though live sessions
• Learn how to carry out your own testing using the latest techniques and methodologies

In Detail

BackBox is an amazing Linux security distribution designed to keep in mind the needs of security and system administration specialists. It has been developed to perform penetration tests and security assessments. Designed to be fast and easy to use while providing a minimal yet complete desktop environment, Backbox comes with its own software repositories and is continually updated to the latest stable version of the most widely used and best-known ethical hacking tools.

This book provides an exciting introduction to BackBox Linux in order give you familiarity with and understanding of this amazing Linux security distro, making you feel comfortable with both the subject of pen-testing and BackBox. The book progresses through topics based on standard cases of penetration testing from the initial steps to the final procedures.

This book will help you discover the exciting world of penetration testing through a series of step-by-step, practical lessons. Penetration Testing with BackBox is organized into eight chapters. Starting with an introduction to BackBox Linux in order to give you a solid grounding of this amazing Linux security distro, including both its design philosophy and feature set, before moving on to practical tutorials in using BackBox. The book is arranged in a chronological order based on standard cases of penetration testing. For those more experienced in the use of penetration testing tools, each chapter can be read independently, providing a detailed overview of how BackBox will augment your arsenal of tools at each step of the penetration testing process.

Throughout this book, you will be given a clear picture of IT security cases by having one of the most popular topics of penetration testing demonstrated in a user-friendly way. By the end of the book, you will have learned all the fundamental skills needed to use BackBox for ethical hacking.

What you will learn from this book

• Perform reconnaissance and collect information about an unknown system
• Perform vulnerability scanning, management, and assessment, as well as understand false positives
• Understand how SQL injection attacks work and find injectable pages on a web server
• Sniff the network to capture sensitive data and learn different methods of privilege escalation
• Maintain permanent access on a target server once access is initially granted
• Use exploitation tools like Metasploit to exploit the reported vulnerabilities
• Learn how to document and generate reports from the entire auditing process

Approach

This practical book outlines the steps needed to perform penetration testing using BackBox. It explains common penetration testing scenarios and gives practical explanations applicable to a real-world setting.

Who this book is written for

This book is written primarily for security experts and system administrators who have an intermediate Linux capability. However, because of the simplicity and user-friendly design, it is also suitable for beginners looking to understand the principle steps of penetration testing.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Starting Out with BackBox Linux
Chapter 2: Information Gathering
Chapter 3: Vulnerability Assessment and Management
Chapter 4: Exploitations
Chapter 5: Eavesdropping and Privilege Escalation
Chapter 6: Maintaining Access
Chapter 7: Penetration Testing Methodologies with BackBox
Chapter 8: Documentation and Reporting