SANS 560 Notes

560.1 Sans 560: Network Penetration and Ethical Hacking

Definitions

• Threat: Agent That can Cause harm
• Vulnerability: A flaw that can be exploited
• Risk: Overlap of Vulnerability and threat
• Exploit: Code/Technique used by a threat on a vulnerability
• Active attack: manipulates target
• Passive Attack: Does not manipulate target
• Ethical Hacking: Using attack techniques to find flaws with permission, to improve security ( aka white hat hacker )
• Penetration testing: An attempt to gain entry to a network
• Security Assessments/Vulnerability Assessment: Finding vulnerabilities
• Security Audit: Comparing findings against a set of standards
• Phases of an attack
  • Recon
  • Scanning
  • Exploitation
• Pentesting limitations:
  • Scope
  • Time
  • Methods
• Pentester limitations:
  • scope
  • time
  • methods

Public/Free methodologies

• Open Source Security Testing Methodology Manual [1]
  • Focus on Transparancy, business value
  • Broad descriptions of categories
  • Numerous templates
• NIST [2]
  • Processes
  • Roles
  • Tools
  • High-level
• OWASP [3]
  • Web app testing
  • compares impact: likelihood