Understanding Penetration Testing Scopes

“Can I have a penetration test please” is about in line with saying “Can I have a car please?”. Why am I writing a blog about this? Well, where do I start, so I have been working on the technology world basically all my career and over the last 20 odd years one area of digital security management that I think a lot of organisations and people struggle with is understanding just what a penetration test is, how it should be used, how long they can take and what is involved. Read more “Understanding Penetration Testing Scopes” →

Defense

Everything must be agile but is that really always…

A lot of people talk about AGILE but the normally mean ‘agile’ however when it comes to security testing and penetration testing (to me there is most certainly a difference) we need to be mindful of the different approaches, so we select the right one for the context, scenario, and objectives.

In this post we take a brief look at what we recommend for a range of scenarios and we look at the key differences and what some constraints might mean when it comes to approach selection.

Hacking

Hail Hydra – RDP brute forcing with HYDRA

Securing services requires a broad range of knowledge of operating systems, networking, protocols and offensive capabilities. So I thought I would demonstrate some testing methods to show how a control is effective in blocking certain types of attack, so here’s some offensive and defensive guidance to limit RDP attacks. Please remember this is for educational purposes, do NOT break the law and only use these techniques where you have permission! #whitehat

Overview

This document provides a sample of the internal (white box) testing process and procedure for testing RDP controls against brute force attacks.

Test Objectives

Demonstrate only authorised users can access the service
Demonstrate Remote Desktop Services has a hardened configuration
Demonstrate a brute force attack

Method

Scope Evaluation
Testing
1. Enumeration
2. Vulnerably Assessment
3. Exploitation
Report Results