Enumeration Methodology

 

Leveraging Threat Intel for Proactive Penetration Testing

With the rise of sophisticated cyber threats, organisations now need to be proactive in order to identify and mitigate potential risks. Leveraging threat intelligence for penetration testing can provide a comprehensive picture of an organisation's security posture. Proactive penetration tests can help detect issues before they become an attack vector, enabling organisations to protect their confidential data and intellectual property more effectively. This article will explore the value of using threat intel for proactive pen tests, as well as best practices for implementing it in your security strategy.

 

Benefits of Proactive Pen Tests

Penetration testing is an essential security measure for any company, as it allows organisations to identify and address potential vulnerabilities in their systems before attackers can exploit them. Proactive penetration tests go a step further by incorporating threat intelligence into the assessment process. This approach provides companies with greater insight into their risks and offers improved protection against malicious actors.

 

Proactive penetration tests provide several distinct benefits to organisations that employ them. By leveraging threat intelligence, such tests are able to identify potential weaknesses from both a technical perspective as well as from the standpoint of an attacker's mindset. This helps IT teams to gain visibility into how malicious actors may attempt to access sensitive data, allowing them to take comprehensive action towards reducing these risks.

 

How to Leverage Threat Intel

Threat intelligence is a valuable tool for organisations trying to stay ahead of potential security threats. Leveraging threat intel can help stop malicious actors before they have the chance to breach an organisation's defences and cause irreparable damage. Knowing how to effectively use threat intelligence can be the difference between detecting a cyber-attack before it happens and being caught off guard.

 

Organisations should begin by understanding the different sources of threat intel, as well as what type of information each source provides. Attack data from public sources, such as open-source intelligence (OSINT) and malware repositories, provide insight into ongoing attacks targeting similar organisations. Private sources, including commercial services and honeypots, offer more in-depth analysis about specific threats that may not be available through publicly accessible channels.

 

Understanding Potential Risks

Information security is an important part of any organisation's overall strategy for success. In order to protect their valuable data and maintain critical operations, organisations must understand the potential risks they face and take proactive measures to mitigate them. Threat intelligence and penetration testing are key components of a comprehensive risk assessment process.

 

Threat intelligence involves identifying and analysing threats from outside sources that could affect an organisation’s data or systems. Security teams use threat intel to stay informed on the latest malicious activities, such as malware campaigns or phishing attempts, so they can proactively defend against them. Penetration testing focuses on assessing the strength of existing internal security controls by simulating attacks similar to those used by real-world attackers. By performing these tests regularly, organisations can discover weaknesses in their security posture before they are exploited by malicious actors.

 

Implementing Security Controls

Implementing appropriate security controls is essential for every organisation. Threat intel and penetration testing can be used to identify vulnerabilities and protect against malicious actors.

 

Threat intel combines the use of technology, human analysis, and collaboration to detect threats before they have a chance to cause damage. By collecting intelligence from external sources, organisations can proactively monitor for malicious activity on their networks. Additionally, threat intel helps organisations understand the scope of an attack or breach in order to better respond and secure their systems.

 

Penetration testing simulates real-world attacks on an organisation’s infrastructure or applications in order to identify weaknesses that could be exploited by attackers. This type of testing typically focuses on identifying vulnerabilities such as misconfiguration or unpatched software and evaluating how well existing security controls are protecting the environment.

 

Conclusion

Organisations can benefit from using threat intel to enhance their pen testing approach. By utilising passive and active threat intelligence, pen testers are able to identify the latest threats and develop proactive strategies for mitigating potential risks. Additionally, organisations can gain insight into how attackers may exploit their systems and utilise threat intel to prioritise their test cases accordingly. Ultimately, proactively leveraging threat intelligence allows pen testers to accurately detect weaknesses in an environment’s security posture.

Security Awareness - Cyber Security while travelling

CAVEAT - this is a post I wrote in 2017 and never published most likely due to me forgetting about it.
Read it at your will, I doubt much has changed but I'm not going to update the article as I'm working on the my Azure learning post. I'm sure I'll get around to it again.

The post:
Most of us now have these wonderful smart devices, we use them to view our emails, check our social media and a whole lot more! What's happening even more now is we are connected to our workplace through these wonderful devices. These devices should be treated as very sensitive devices given the amount of data that can be stored and viewed through these devices.

So what do I mean by smart devices?
Blackberry (what?)
Smart Phones
Tablets
Laptops

Can't forget about smart watches and hell if you try hard enough you can hack your fridge [ WIRED.com ] and use it for business purposes!

Even more common lately, especially if you happen to work for a nice company, you now have the option to work on the go/work from home. This makes it a lot more important that you and all users become more aware of security and especially staying secure on the road/at home.

So now that we have an idea of what is meant by smart devices and their uses what can we do about ensuring their security?

Let's work under the presumption that the device you have is already hardened pretty well, you have a phone with MobileIron configured, or you have a laptop with state-of-the-art encryption and secure connections to your workplace. You as a user need to put in place some simple but effective practices to make security great again!


1. Make sure your device is up-to-date.
This my friendly users is so very important. Not only do I mean install the latest Operating System updates, but also to have the latest Anti-Virus protection, your browser updates, adobe/java updates. While this is critical in the normal workplace it is even more critical while on the move!

2. Take what you need.
You're gone for three days, you'll be working on a specific project for the most part and might get a chance to touch on one or two other things. If that's the case just bring those one or two things with you.

Your laptop is six years old, one day you're sitting in the airport bar where service is a little lax, you get up to get another drink and forget to lock the laptop, you turn around not thirty seconds later and the laptop is gone. When's the last time you went through that six-year-old laptop and cleaned it out? If your answer isn't this morning then you've potentially lost six years worth of sensitive data and now your company will be a tad bit angry with you.

Keep it clean and only bring what you need

Basic Setup for a Penetration testing lab

Ok so I am part of the college Ethical hacker society and becoming more active I have decided to run a weekly get together to practice pen testing & all things related. Below is the activity I described as a basic setup for someone with no knowledge of VM's or Kali/BackTrack.

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This is just a brief outline of the setup you will need for the Hacker Soc meetings.

Software:

HashMyFiles: http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/hash_my_files.html

VMPlayer: http://www.truecrypt.org/downloads

OR

VMWorkstation (trial version): https://my.vmware.com/web/vmware/info/slug/desktop_end_user_computing/vmware_workstation/10_0

OR

Virtual Box: https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads

Kali: http://www.kali.org/downloads/

OR

Backtrack: http://www.backtrack-linux.org/downloads/

Or both

Metasploitable: http://sourceforge.net/projects/metasploitable/

TrueCrypt: http://www.truecrypt.org/downloads

Guide:

HashMyFiles

HashMyFiles is a hash checker. This is used to check the integrity of the files you have just downloaded.

Usually before downloading you should see a MD5 or SHA number, take note of this. This is your hash, hashes are a random string of numbers and letters that are specific to the file you are about to download.

Once the file has been downloaded, load it into HashMyFiles and wait for it to compute the hash. If the hashes match then you’re downloads integrity hasn’t been compromised.

I recommend doing this for every file that you are given a hash for just as standard practice so you know nothing has been compromised. To read more on hashing check out: http://www.techopedia.com/definition/19744/hash-function

VMPlayer/VMWorkstation/Virtual Box

These tools are virtualisation software used to host your machines such as Kali/BackTrack which we will get to later.

Personally I use VMWorkstation, I find it really easy to load VM’s, create new VM’s & generally work with & I used VMPlayer for a couple of years before hand so it was natural progression.

If you like VMPlayer I recommend using VMWorkstation to see what more you can do. I can provide support for most things with these programs; the alternate option is to use Virtual Box (VBox). There is no issue in using this and from experience it is used a lot more in industry than VMWare but I will only be able to help out so much before I run into issues.

If you have any issues with these there are loads of guides and tutorial on googles.

Install: Kali

Kali (not the Indian goddess) is a Debian Linux Distribution designed for Digital Forensic & Penetration Testing. It is a continuation of Backtrack; it includes most of the tool you will need for testing/hacking.

For the purpose of the guide I will be using VMWorkstation to install Kali but I will release a VMPlayer & VBox guide in the future.

I recommend using virtualisation to host your Operating Systems when Hacking as you may have tools on Windows that are not available on Kali & vice versa also you could have 2 Kali’s open doing different things. This again is my personal opinion but I find a lot of security people would agree with this setup also.

So firstly you need to create the Kali VM in VMWorkstation. To do this go to File > New Virtual Machine.

Select:

>Typical (recommended)

>Installer disk image file (ISO):

>Browse

>Navigate to where you have downloaded Kali

>Open

>Next

>Enter name for your VM

>Select a location for your VM(leave untouched if you want it to be saved in the standard place)

>Next

>Enter in the size you want to give to your installation (recommended: 20GB //can be changed in the future if needed)

>Store virtual disk as a single file

>Next

>Now click the Customize hardware button

>Click Memory and increase that. I recommend half of what your laptop currently has (recommended minimum 2GB). **Do not give the VM to much RAM as you will slow down your host machine and your laptop could potentially, to put it in technical terms, crap out**

>Click processors and give it the same amount of processors that your laptop has (It will give you a error if it is too much)

>Click cores per processors and give it the same amount of processors that your laptop has (It will give you a error if it is too much)

>You can configure your Network Adaptors here also; Leave it as NAT for now.

>Close

>Finish

Your Kali system will now boot up...

>Click into the VM

>Go to Graphical Install

>Press Enter

Kali’s installation wizard will now load.

>Select “English - English” (or appropriate)

>Select “Ireland” (or appropriate)

>Select “Irish” (or appropriate)

This will start the initial installation of Kali, may take a while depending how much RAM you have given to the machine.

>Enter the hostname for you VM

>You will probably have no domain name so just press Continue

>Enter your password(for standard we use “ toor “ as the password)

>Continue

More auto setup

>Partition disks select Guided – use entire disk

>Continue

>Continue

>Continue

>Yes

>Continue (talk about a goto fail eh?)

Installation will continue.

>You will be asked to configure the packet manager

>If you are using a proxy you need to configure it here, if not click YES and continue

Installation will continue.

>You will be asked to install the GRUB boot loader (googles for more info)

>Select Yes

>Continue

Installation will continue.

>Installation will complete and click Continue

Instillation has now completed, to access the system you will need the username and password.

Username: root

Password: toor

Install: Backtrack (BT)

Backtrack is a Debian Linux Distribution designed for Digital Forensic & Penetration Testing. It is the old version of Kali; it includes most of the tool you will need for testing/hacking.

For the purpose of the guide I will be using VMWorkstation to install BT but I will release a VMPlayer & VBox guide in the future.

I recommend using virtualisation to host your Operating Systems when Hacking as you may have tools on Windows that are not available on BT & vice versa also you could have 2 BT’s open doing different things or have BT & Kali open simultaneously. This again is my personal opinion but I find a lot of security people would agree with this setup also.

So firstly you need to create the BT VM in VMWorkstation. To do this go to File > New Virtual Machine.

Select:

>Typical (recommended)

>Installer disk image file (ISO):

>Browse

>Navigate to where you have downloaded BT

>Open

>Next

>Enter name for your VM

>Select a location for your VM (leave untouched if you want it to be saved in the standard place)

>Next

>Enter in the size you want to give to your installation (recommended: 20GB //can be changed in the future if needed)

>Store virtual disk as a single file

>Next

>Now click the Customize hardware button

>Click Memory and increase that. I recommend half of what your laptop currently has (recommended minimum 2GB). **Do not give the VM to much RAM as you will slow down your host machine and your laptop could potentially, to put it in technical terms, crap out**

>Click processors and give it the same amount of processors that your laptop has (It will give you a error if it is too much)

>Click cores per processors and give it the same amount of processors that your laptop has (It will give you a error if it is too much)

>You can configure your Network Adaptors here also; Leave it as NAT for now.

>Close

>Finish

Your BT system will now boot up...

>Click into the VM

>Go to BackTrack Text – Default Boot Text Mode

It will take a little bit and you will be presented with:

root@bt:

>Enter “ startx ”

>Press enter

>There will be an icon on the desktop called ”Install BackTrack”, double click this.

Select:

>English (or appropriate)

>Forward

>The time zone should configure itself, if not select Ireland on the map (or appropriate)

>Again the keyboard layout should auto config if not select Ireland – Ireland (or appropriate)

>Forward

>Make sure erase and use the entire disk is selected

>Forward

>Check your settings are correct & select Install

Installation will commence

The next message you will get is to restart. Click the restart button.

Instillation has now completed, to access the system you will need the username and password.

Username: root

Password: toor

TO start: startx

Install: Metasploitable

Metasploitable is an intentionally vulnerable Linux distribution.

This is a great starting point for anyone looking to try out there skills. There are plenty of guides on the googles of how to exploit it but I recommend taking a look at it fist and trying out different thing before you go reading a walkthrough. Its one thing reading but actually learning how to do it is 10x better!

To load Metasploitable in VMWorkstation you need to go to:

>File

>Open

>Metasploitable.vmx

>Power on this VM

>Select I copied it

Your Metasploitable system will now boot up...

Leave it alone and go to your Kali/BT machine and start testing against it.

Install: VMTools

VMWare give you the option of install VMWare Tools which is used to drag things from your host machine to your Kali/BT box. I recommend doing this so you won’t be constantly plugging in & out a USB drive.

To do this you should select VM > Install VMTools

The VMTools folder will popup.

Now for the mad Linux skillz KFed style...

Drag the VMTools folder to the desktop.

Enter the following commands:

**HINT: if you type VM and then press tab it should auto fill the rest of it.

Now the fun bit:

Press:

>Enter

>Enter

>Enter

>Enter

>Enter

>y

>Enter

>Enter

>y

>Enter

>y

>Enter

>n

>Enter

>n

>Enter

>y

>Enter

>y

>Enter

>n

>Enter

AHHH It all went black!!!

Phew...

Now reboot your system and test... It may take a second so be patient!

This will work for both Kali & BT so rinse and repeat.

Install: TrueCrypt

Download,

Install,

Read the guides on the googles...

The only reason I threw this in here is because it is good practice encrypting your stuff. I have my USB encrypted via TrueCrypt so if any of you want anything from me you will need it too.

Kali & BT come with it pre installed so just get it for your windows if you haven’t already.

That is my basic setup guide, a few things to do in Kali & BackTrack once started would be to open a terminal & enter:

apt-get update;apt-get dist-upgrade

That command will update the OS.

Also:

apt-get install armitage

DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks.

DDoS is when a person or many people attempt to bring down a server or website by overloading the server with requests.  When this is done it essentially prevents other people for accessing the website or service.

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What to expect?

Now if you attempt this attack by yourself there are a few outcomes that you could expect:

The first outcome is if you attempt to deny service to a big website such as Google or Wikipedia you won’t even make a dent and they will shrug you off like you were never there.

The second outcome is if you attempt to deny service to a medium sized website such as small to medium sized companies who host their own websites. You may slow them down or even take them down for a few minutes, but eventually all will be rectified and they will hopefully know better next time. [How to prevent DDoS attacks article coming soon]

The third outcome is if you attempt to deny service to a small website, something like your friend’s website or a personal website. These can be taken down very easy depending on your own connection.

There are many other things that can happen but these would be the main ones, DDoS attacks are more likely to succeed if you are doing them at the same time or set up botnet or zombie computers, more on them in my forthcoming articles.

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Big Attacks in the past:

On March 18^th the largest DDoS attack occurred, this attack was against Spamhaus, A not-for-profit anti-spam organisation. It began at 10Gbps and quickly escalated only to peak at 90Gbps. All was quiet for a few days until March 22^nd when the attack resumed and peaks at 120Gbps. This was the biggest(at the time of writing) attack ever preformed...

But did it “break the internet” like it was intended? No, Spamhaus had measures in place to prevent such attacks which kept the systems online, Now not to say that it wasn't a valiant effort but unfortunately this time it didn't succeed.

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How to attack using DDoS?

Most people use a program to perform their DDoS attacks these days, but I’ll show you that in a moment, the old way to do things would be as follows:

1.      Open your command line

2.      Type: "ping [website or IP] -l 5120 -n 100000 -w 1"

The website or IP allows you to type one or the other, so for instance it could be www.google.com or 74.125.24.147.

The “5120” is the size of the packet your want to send, in this example it is 5KB, this must not surpass your own capabilities or you could deny your service and not anyone else’s.

Then the “100000” is the amount of packets you wish to send to the target, this can be as many or as little as you want, the more you send the longer the attack will last.

Finally the “–w 1” is the amount of time you wish to wait before the next packet is sent, this can also be altered to suit the individual attack.

Now that the basic ways are covered I will move onto the programs that people use, there are many programs out there that can be used but be warned that a lot of these programs contain backdoors which will allow the backdoor maker access to your computer, you are best to get clean programs from sources. Some programs will appear to be infected according to your anti-virus but that is expected, and is up to your own judgment whether you wish to use it or not.

A lot of people swear by the LOIC or the Low Orbit Ion Cannon as it was so funnily called. The LOIC is a program created by anonymous members from the website www.4chan.org. All that is needed to do is you type in the website name that you wish to attack, lock on, set thread count(9001 max) and then hit the “IMMA CHARGIN MAH LAZAR!” button and the attack will be started.

Any attack has a greater success rate if carried out simultaneously by multiple people. This can be accomplished by getting friends to do this with you or by using botnets. Also when carrying out these attacks it is recommended to use a VPN either paid or free.

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Disclaimer:

All methods shown in this article are for educational use only, This website will not be held responsible for your actions (but if you do something stupid feel free to let us know so we can have a giggle ;) )