Penetration Testing mailing list archives
RE: Penetration Testing Services
From: Khalid Lakdawala <k.lakdawala () arbahcapital com>
Date: Mon, 9 Aug 2010 09:24:28 +0300
Dear, Kindly note that external penetration test is usually driven by couple of factor ( Compliance, Regulatory, SOX, PCI DSS etc most probably for financial system / Privacy protection) If there is no regulatory or compliance requirement within your company and if you don’t have any financial systems/ or system which holds personal information directly exposed to external network ( Public network), then internal review will suffice and there won't be any need for external test. You should note that the internal Auditor understand the RISK and have proper understanding of VA/PT and Application testing, let me give you brief how can you have some level of comfort if your system are Secures. Take an example you have web site which collects and Stores personal information from customers and stores this in backend database. In such scnerio your internal Audit team should ensure following controls. 1. Security Architecture : Ensuring that the Web system and application / DB are on different segment protected by firewall 2. Configuration review of Firewalls/ Network devices to ensure only required traffic is permitted from external network 3. System Hardening: Ensure your web server OS and Web components ( IIS/Apache ) is hardened.(including AV and patches) 4. Vulnerability Scan : HERE YOUR NESSUS WILL BE USED 5. Web Application Testing: Here you have to cover some manual and auto test for SQL Injection , CCX, Session management etc : You can refer OWASP web site for details, most organization atleast cover Top test vulnerability. ( you can use tools like PAROX / BURP/ Metasploit etc) 6. You need to manually review and Harden the backend database ( Oracle/ SQL etc) 7. Review of Audit logs for incidents ( IPS logs, System logs etc)- This is option security control to understand the past attach pattern. If your internal Auditor has capability to achieve 80% in each of these then I think it should suffice. Regards Khalid - CISO -----Original Message----- From: listbounce () securityfocus com [mailto:listbounce () securityfocus com] On Behalf Of MAlMozaiyn () alfransi com sa Sent: Sunday, August 08, 2010 2:36 PM To: cribbar Cc: listbounce () securityfocus com; pen-test () securityfocus com Subject: Re: Penetration Testing Services Hi there, Tools, like Nessus, are vulnerability-oriented. They can point at vulnerabilities. Of course, in some cases these are only false-positives. However, what you need to be aware of is not "only" vulnerabilities. This needs to be extended to cover Risks. What a third-party MUST provide is a risk-driven report that shows real vulnerabilities in your systems and are very relevant to your environment and makes sense to be fixed. In addition to the above, penetration testing process is not limited to scanning the network. As the name indicates, it is to potentially attempt to penetrate resources for testing (assessment) purposes. To conclude, Nessus, as well as other tools are a great additions to the penetration testing practice. It is not the full picture, and at the same time, missing these factors is a noticeable depreciation. Have a good day, Mohammed Almozaiyn, CISSP, GCIH Senior Security Analyst ——————————————————— * malmozaiyn () alfransi com sa ——————————————————— From: cribbar <crib.bar () hotmail co uk> To: pen-test () securityfocus com Date: 03-08-2010 09:23 AM Subject: Penetration Testing Services Sent by: listbounce () securityfocus com Penetration Testing Community - I am interested in getting an expert response to a discussion that keeps raising up in our company. First off, I have some basic IT/Infrastructure knowledge, but I am most definitely not up to the level of a penetration tester (please bare this in mind with your responses). Basically, our company has an internal IT Security section, who has recently purchased some of the popular vulnerability assessment software such as Nessus. They are running quarterly scans using Nessus across an IP range and producing a report to senior management on the types of security holes in the Network and how they can be fixed (and more importantly to management how much it is going to cost to fix). I’ve spent a couple of hours on the Nessus website looking at the types of “vulnerability” it will catch, and it seems to cover a whole array of topics and security issues. This leads to the inevitable comment from senior management, if we have an IT Security section who are using the most common vulnerability scanning / penetration testing tools –what is the point in investing significant $$$ in buying in a 3rd party to do exactly the same? I fully appreciate that penetration testing is an area of high skill, as a 3rd party you provide an independent neutral security review, it takes years to master the topic, and once mastered you need to stay up to date with all the current vulnerabilities and exploits, and it is your guy’s area of expertise, whereas a security admin is not specific to penetration testing. And let’s be honest, anyone can essentially download a user friendly piece of software and click “scan” or whatever and produce a report listing problems. However, in order to be in defence of the pen testing community during such discussions, I have a few questions…. • How do you as penetration testers, portray the importance of this independent check to future potential clients? Is this independence really that important? • What broadly speaking do you as professional penetration testers bring additional to a nessus scan during the services you provide? If there are categories of security issues/vulnerabilities that you can flag up doing one of your penetration tests that Nessus wont - that would be incredibly useful to know, and I’d love to be able to identify the limitations of Nessus scans but I am a bit out of my depth to be able to do so. • I trawled through the archives of this forum and others, and it seems some pen testing companies use the exact same tools such as nmap and nessus, and in some cases simply pass across a Nessus report for a specific IP range and that’s the report they use. This to me sounds a complete rip off, and I can’t see the benefit. So where is the added benefit in having an internal security guy run nessus, and paying a 3rd party pen tester x amount of $$$ money to do exactly the same? Why not just stick with the internal guy? Or am I missing something? I really would appreciate real examples of whereby just running Nessus is simply not enough as it wont catch a, b and c! I look forward to your comments. -- View this message in context: http://old.nabble.com/Penetration-Testing-Services-tp29324189p29324189.html Sent from the Penetration Testing mailing list archive at Nabble.com. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ This list is sponsored by: Information Assurance Certification Review Board Prove to peers and potential employers without a doubt that you can actually do a proper penetration test. IACRB CPT and CEPT certs require a full practical examination in order to become certified. http://www.iacertification.org ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ARBAH CAPITAL 7th Floor, Samic Building, Al Khaleej Road, Shatee District, Corniche, P .O. Box 8807, Dammam 31492, Saudi Arabia. URL: www.arbahcapital.com. 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Current thread:
- Re: Penetration Testing Services, (continued)
- Re: Penetration Testing Services Robin Wood (Aug 03)
- RE: Penetration Testing Services Jason Hurst (Aug 03)
- Re: Penetration Testing Services Andre Gironda (Aug 03)
- Re: Penetration Testing Services Richard Miles (Aug 16)
- RE: Penetration Testing Services Mathew Sealy (Aug 03)
- Message not available
- Re: Penetration Testing Services Jonathan Leigh (Aug 03)
- Re: Penetration Testing Services BMF (Aug 03)
- Re: Penetration Testing Services Todd Hughes (Aug 03)
- RE: Penetration Testing Services Hugo V. Garcia R. (Aug 03)
- Re: Penetration Testing Services MAlMozaiyn (Aug 08)
- RE: Penetration Testing Services Khalid Lakdawala (Aug 12)
- Re: Penetration Testing Services cribbar (Aug 12)