Penetration Testing mailing list archives
RE: Email Pen-testing
From: "Chuck Herrin" <me () chuckherrin com>
Date: Mon, 22 Mar 2004 14:30:07 -0500
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 I have to agree. In my experience, it is rare that a company actually wants a "pen-test" in the sense of the term that Ron and I both use. More often, they want a portscan, a nice report, and a pat on the back. Pen-testing is expensive, inefficient (in that you only have to find one hole), and often does not provide an accurate picture of "how to secure" a network. IMNotSoHumbleO, the cycle in a perfect world would be: Vulnerability Assessment (the ISS and Nessus runs with pie charts and detailed reports), remediation (either the in-house admins or 3rd party people fix the holes), and then a pen-test to see if the fixes actually hardened the network. Unfortunately, very few companies can or will devote this kind of time and $$ to their security. They feel that their due diligence is satisfied by paying someone to run Nessus against their firewall and tell them everything's OK. As for real tests involving social engineering, dumpster diving, etc. many companies I've met with consider it a waste of effort. Actual quote: "We know you can get in if you try to trick our people. What we want is a real test of what a hacker or a script kiddie would do." <sigh> Smile politely, grit teeth. </sigh>. Until companies realize that their people can be their biggest asset or biggest liability in securing their network, attackers will always have the Social Engineering Trump Card. By the way, I can tell you from experience - Social Engineering and Password Cracking are 2 VERY SPECIFIC things that MUST be laid out in your proposal or scoping documentation from the start. These 2 things will land you in a lot of trouble if explicit permission is not given before doing either one. A friend of mine almost went to jail for assuming they'd be OK with it. After the report was submitted, it turns out they weren't. Oops! Just my 2 cents, Chuck Www.chuckherrin.com - -----Original Message----- From: R. DuFresne [mailto:dufresne () sysinfo com] Sent: Monday, March 22, 2004 1:01 PM To: Kevin Cc: pen-test () securityfocus com Subject: RE: Email Pen-testing It's about time the industry, IT as a whole comes to understand; a pentest is something much more then a simple port/vuln scan from outside. a simple port/vuln scan has it's value, as a way to probe for potential risks. A *real* pentest is an attempt to actually make use of potential holes, show they are in fact real risks, and will in fact be able to be exploited to gain illegal//unwanted entry into an org's systems and to their core data and apps. At lesat tince Mitnick's days social engineering has shown to be a major gateway to resources that should be better protected. A company asking for a mere set of potentials wants a sweet little report done on a port/vuln scan that anyone with minimal skills can accomplish. A companyt actually wishing to determine how well they have done their job of protecting assests might opt for a full pentest, with all the stops out of the bag. Advance warnings of each and every step is not a level playing filed and certainly does not resemble reality for sure. Thanks, Ron DuFresne On Mon, 22 Mar 2004, Kevin wrote:
Well, human are the weakest link in the security ring.. and social engineering is always the easiest (if not the best) technique to open up loopholes in a security system. Although it's an area which requires most emphasizes and concern, it is also the most sensitive area where security managers get stuck often in. If the company is ok with social engineering in the pen test, then I suppose it's ok.. It's ethical as long as you're doing it for a cause not malicious and harmful. -----Original Message----- From: Blake [mailto:netspan () hotmail com] Sent: Sunday, March 21, 2004 12:22 AM To: pen-test () securityfocus com Subject: Email Pen-testing Wanted to get your opinion on something... Doing a pen-test for a small bank which was proving very difficult to get it. A friend of mine suggested I send a backdoor trojan attachment via an email. If they clicked on it, the backdoor performs maybe a boxscan, grab passwords, and connects out to the Internet. --Much like a virus. I think this type of testing is becoming more relevant nowadays, especially with whats out there. It reinforces properly configured antivirus software and user awareness. I spoke with a previous customer of mine about the idea. He said he would be very upset if he was not told prior to that type of test as part of normal pen-testing. Generally speaking, my code of ethics doesn't allow me to social engineer. I don't like lying and misleading people. Also people tend to hate you after they've been punk'd. What's your ideas on the email pen-tesing? -Blake -------------------------------------------------------------------- -- -- --- Ethical Hacking at the InfoSec Institute. Mention this ad and get $545 off any course! All of our class sizes are guaranteed to be 10 students or less to facilitate one-on-one interaction with one of our expert instructors. Attend a course taught by an expert instructor with years of in-the-field pen testing experience in our state of the art hacking lab. Master the skills of an Ethical Hacker to better assess the security of your organization. Visit us at: http://www.infosecinstitute.com/courses/ethical_hacking_training.htm l -------------------------------------------------------------------- ---- ---- -------------------------------------------------------------------- -- ----- You're a pen tester, but is google.com still your R&D team? Now you can get trustworthy commercial-grade exploits and the latest techniques from a world-class research group. www.coresecurity.com/promos/sf_ept1 -------------------------------------------------------------------- --------
- -- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ admin & senior security consultant: sysinfo.com http://sysinfo.com "Cutting the space budget really restores my faith in humanity. It eliminates dreams, goals, and ideals and lets us get straight to the business of hate, debauchery, and self-annihilation." -- Johnny Hart testing, only testing, and damn good at it too! - ---------------------------------------------------------------------- - ----- You're a pen tester, but is google.com still your R&D team? Now you can get trustworthy commercial-grade exploits and the latest techniques from a world-class research group. www.coresecurity.com/promos/sf_ept1 - ---------------------------------------------------------------------- - ------ -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGPfreeware 7.0.3 for non-commercial use <http://www.pgp.com> iQA/AwUBQF8+v6bL2AcPBTOlEQIfeQCdFc4xZuJn/LK/U8QYdkEx6MZINIUAoMq2 1oLYE5xIc6jy6/k4Dnsvypp2 =YaOc -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- You're a pen tester, but is google.com still your R&D team? Now you can get trustworthy commercial-grade exploits and the latest techniques from a world-class research group. www.coresecurity.com/promos/sf_ept1 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Current thread:
- Email Pen-testing Blake (Mar 21)
- RE: Email Pen-testing Kevin (Mar 22)
- RE: Email Pen-testing R. DuFresne (Mar 22)
- RE: Email Pen-testing Blake Wiedman (Mar 22)
- RE: Email Pen-testing Chuck Herrin (Mar 22)
- RE: Email Pen-testing James Taylor (Mar 23)
- RE: Email Pen-testing Kevin (Mar 23)
- RE: Email Pen-testing Chris Hurley (Mar 23)
- RE: Email Pen-testing AJ Butcher, Information Systems and Computing (Mar 23)
- RE: Email Pen-testing Frank Knobbe (Mar 24)
- Re: Email Pen-testing Michael Richardson (Mar 24)
- RE: Email Pen-testing R. DuFresne (Mar 22)
- RE: Email Pen-testing Kevin (Mar 22)
- RE: Email Pen-testing Rob Shein (Mar 23)
- RE: Email Pen-testing Brad . Murray (Mar 23)
- Re: Email Pen-testing Michael Richardson (Mar 23)
- RE: Email Pen-testing R. DuFresne (Mar 23)