Re: penetration tester advice

[Joe McCray <joe () rootwars org>]

Wow - that's going to be a serious question to answer. I'd say that a lot of it 
has to do with knowibg exactly what you are trying to accomplish in the pentest 
(that needs to be well defined). A really important issue in my mind is going 
to be are you going to a vulnerability assessment (VA), or are you going to be 
doing a penetration test (PT). By that I mean are you going to just scan the 
network looking for high, medium, and low vulnerabilities (VA) then give the 
customer a pretty report with lots of charts, or do you plan to actually 
attempt to exploit the vulnerabilities that you find i.e. gain 
root/administrative privileges on the systems.

If you are just doing a VA check out the following tools:
Nessus - http://nessus.org/
ISS - http://www.iss.net/
Harris STAT - http://www.statonline.harris.com/
LANGuard - http://www.gfi.com/lannetscan/
Retina - http://www.eeye.com/html/Products/Retina/


If you are going to do a pentest check these sites out:
http://www.ideahamster.org/ <--- Awesome project read the OSSTMM (it's a must)
PenTest Mailing List - SecurityFocus List 
BugTraq - SecurityFocus List
VulnDev - SecurityFocus List
WebAppSec - SecurityFocus List
There are a lot of really smart people with a lot of experience in those lists.


Exploits:
http://packetstormsecurity.nl/exploits100.shtml

Tools:
http://packetstormsecurity.nl/tools100.shtml


There is a lot of stuff out there to read, and if you are going to do 
pentesting I'd say join all of those SecurityFocus mailing lists, set up a lab 
and try out every exploit that you plan to use before you use it on a 
customer's network. In the games I host at my website I've seen people do 
things like use solaris exploits made for sparc against a solaris box running 
on x86 and it trashed the box. Some exploits can kill the service that they are 
trying to exploit. 

I hope this helps...

Joe McCray
joe () rootwars org
http://www.rootwars.org
Hacking Games   Hands-on Courses   HackLab Access



Quoting Mehmet Buyukozer <mbuyukozer () gmx co uk>:

> Hi All; i dont know if i am sending this mail to wrong list but my problem
> is; i need some advice for penetration test. some of our clients wanted us
> to make them penetration test. I am already familiar with nessus, but they
> wanted to be test with different applications for scanning. Can u give me
> the names which are ur favourite. Thanx in advance
>
>
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---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Captus Networks 
Are you prepared for the next Sobig & Blaster? 
 - Instantly Stop DoS/DDoS Attacks, Worms & Port Scans 
 - Precisely Define and Implement Network Security 
 - Automatically Control P2P, IM and Spam Traffic 
FIND OUT NOW -  FREE Vulnerability Assessment Toolkit 
http://www.captusnetworks.com/ads/42.htm
----------------------------------------------------------------------------