Top 10 security tools for penetration testing -1!

Penetration testing is a way for you to simulate the methods that an attacker might use to circumvent

security controls and gain access to an target's systems. you won’t become an expert penetration tester

overnight; it takes years of practice and real-world experience to become proficient.

There are some Phases of the Penetration testing like :

1. Pre-engagement Interactions

2. Intelligence Gathering

3. Threat Modeling

4. Vulnerability Analysis

5. Exploitation

6. Post Exploitation

7. Reporting

Penetration Testing tools are used as part of a penetration test to

automate certain tasks, improve testing efficiency, and discover

issues that might be difficult to find using manual analysis

techniques alone.

Top 10 Penetration Testing Tools :

1. Kali-linux :

Kali Linux is an advanced Penetration Testing and Security Auditing

Linux distribution.

Kali Linux Features :

* More than 300 penetration testing tools

* Free and always will be

* Open source Git tree
* FHS compliant
* Vast wireless device support
* Custom kernel patched for injection
* Secure development environment
* GPG signed packages and repos
* ARMEL and ARMHF support
* Completely customizable

Download it from here.

2. Metasploit.

This is the most advanced and popular Framework that can be used to

for pen-testing. It is based on the concept of ‘exploit’ which is a

code that can surpass the security measures and enter a certain system.

The typical life cycle of a vulnerability and its exploitation is as

follows:

1. Discovery : A security researcher or the vendor discovers a critical

security vulnerability in the software.

Analysis: The researcher or others across the world begin analyzing the

vulnerability to determine its exploit ability.

Exploit Development :

This has usually been considered a bit

of a black art, requiring an in-depth understanding of the processor’s

registers, assembly code, offsets, and payloads.

Testing: This is the phase where the coder now checks the exploit code

against various platforms, service pack, or patches, and possibly even

for different processors.

Release:

Once the exploit is tested, and the specific parameters required for

its successful execution have been determined, the coder releases the

exploit, either privately or on a public forum. Often, the exploit is

tweaked so that it does not work right out of the box.This is usually

done to dissuade script kiddies from simply downloading the exploit and

running it against a vulnerable system.

Metasploit takes the following structured approach while mounting an attack:

i) Pick which exploit to use.

ii) Configure the exploit with remote IP address and remote port number.

iii) Pick a payload.

iv) Configure the payload with local IP address and local port number.

v) Execute the exploit.

You can download it from here.

3. Namp

This is a very popular tool that predominantly aids in understanding

the characteristics of any target network. The characteristics can

include: host, services, OS, packet filters/firewalls etc.  It works

on most of the environments and is open sourced.

Nmap support several types of scans like :

* TCP connect
* XMAS tree scan
* SYN stealth scan
* Null scan
* Windows scan
* ACK scan

You can download it from here.

4. Wireshark :

Wire-shark is a network packet analyzer. A network packet analyzer will

try to capture network packets and tries to display that packet data

as detailed as possible.

Penetration test tools like Wireshark come in handy for understanding

and exploiting the data organization posted by forms or services to

applications. Application vulnerabilities such as parameter pollution,

SQL injection, lack of input validation, as well as buffer overflow can

be easily detected and exploited using Wireshark.

Features

The following are some of the many features Wireshark provides:

    Available for UNIX and Windows.

    Capture live packet data from a network interface.

    Open files containing packet data captured with tcpdump/WinDump, Wireshark, and a number of other packet capture programs.

    Import packets from text files containing hex dumps of packet data.

    Display packets with very detailed protocol information.

    Save packet data captured.

    Export some or all packets in a number of capture file formats.

    Filter packets on many criteria.

    Search for packets on many criteria.

    Colorize packet display based on filters.

    Create various statistics.

You can download it from here.

5. Nessus:

Nessus is a great tool designed to automate the testing and discovery

of known security problems. Typically someone, a hacker group,

a security company, or a researcher discovers a specific way to

violate the security of a software product.

It is one of the most robust vulnerability identifier tools available.

It specializes in compliance checks, Sensitive data searches, IPs scan,

website scanning etc.

You can download it from here.

In my next tutorial , i will continue !