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Gray Hat Hacking 38

The document discusses the importance of understanding security vulnerabilities within organizations, highlighting the role of ethical hackers in identifying potential threats. It contrasts the responsibilities of security officers, who often face resistance for enforcing security measures, with the work of ethical hackers who conduct penetration tests to uncover weaknesses. Additionally, it explains the process of vulnerability assessments, which utilize automated tools to identify and report system vulnerabilities and necessary countermeasures.

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8 views1 page

Gray Hat Hacking 38

The document discusses the importance of understanding security vulnerabilities within organizations, highlighting the role of ethical hackers in identifying potential threats. It contrasts the responsibilities of security officers, who often face resistance for enforcing security measures, with the work of ethical hackers who conduct penetration tests to uncover weaknesses. Additionally, it explains the process of vulnerability assessments, which utilize automated tools to identify and report system vulnerabilities and necessary countermeasures.

Uploaded by

digapo7593
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Gray Hat Hacking, The Ethical Hacker’s Handbook, Third Edition

10
How Does This Stuff Relate to an
Ethical Hacking Book?
Corporations and individuals need to understand how the damage is being done so
they understand how to stop it. Corporations also need to understand the extent of the
threat that a vulnerability represents. Let’s take a very simplistic example. The company
FalseSenseOfSecurity, Inc., may allow its employees to share directories, files, and whole
hard drives. This is done so that others can quickly and easily access data as needed. The
company may understand that this practice could possibly put the files and systems at
risk, but they only allow employees to have unclassified files on their computers, so the
company is not overly concerned. The real security threat, which is something that
should be uncovered by an ethical hacker, is if an attacker can use this file-sharing ser-
vice as access into a computer itself. Once this computer is compromised, the attacker
will most likely plant a backdoor and work on accessing another, more critical system
via the compromised system.
The vast amount of functionality that is provided by an organization’s networking,
database, and desktop software can be used against them. Within each and every orga-
nization, there is the all-too-familiar battle of functionality vs. security. This is the rea-
son that, in most environments, the security officer is not the most well-liked
individual in the company. Security officers are in charge of ensuring the overall secu-
rity of the environment, which usually means reducing or shutting off many function-
alities that users love. Telling people that they cannot access social media sites, open
attachments, use applets or JavaScript via e-mail, or plug in their mobile devices to a
network-connected system and making them attend security awareness training does
not usually get you invited to the Friday night get-togethers at the bar. Instead, these
people are often called “Security Nazi” or “Mr. No” behind their backs. They are re-
sponsible for the balance between functionality and security within the company, and
it is a hard job.
The ethical hacker’s job is to find these things running on systems and networks,
and he needs to have the skill set to know how an enemy would use these things against
the organization. This work is referred to as a penetration test, which is different from
a vulnerability assessment, which we’ll discuss first.

Vulnerability Assessment
A vulnerability assessment is usually carried out by a network scanner on steroids. Some
type of automated scanning product is used to probe the ports and services on a range
of IP addresses. Most of these products can also test for the type of operating system
and application software running and the versions, patch levels, user accounts, and
services that are also running. These findings are matched up with correlating vulnera-
bilities in the product’s database. The end result is a large pile of reports that provides a
list of each system’s vulnerabilities and corresponding countermeasures to mitigate the
associated risks. Basically, the tool states, “Here is a list of your vulnerabilities and here
is a list of things you need to do to fix them.”

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