Penetration Testing mailing list archives
Re: Is Pentesting Goal Oriented, or Coverage Oriented?
From: Robin Wood <dninja () gmail com>
Date: Mon, 5 Oct 2009 16:54:29 +0100
2009/10/3 Daniel Miessler <daniel () danielmiessler com>:
Greetings List, I'm having a discussion with Johannes Ullrich via the SANS Application Security Streetfighter Blog on whether penetration testing is goal or coverage oriented. Johannes's position is that a pentest that attains a goal, e.g. root access or a database dump, and then stops is an incomplete and poor pentest. He believes a good pentester should continue finding as many vulnerabilities as he can. I hold the opposite view, which is that a penetration test is, by definition, focused on achieving a specific goal, and that if the aim of testing is to find as many vulnerabilities as possible the type of test you're performing is a vulnerability assessment.
I'd agree with Johannes, if you find one hole then stop then you are leaving a job half done and the client doesn't get what they've paid for. What happens when they've fixed that bug, do they have to go back to the tester and start the whole process again? On a poor system that approach could take a long time. The difference between vulnerability scanning is how far you go once you find an issue, vulnerability scanning just reports that there is an issue there, penetration testing actually tries to exploit that. Robin ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 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 ------------------------------------------------------------------------
Current thread:
- Is Pentesting Goal Oriented, or Coverage Oriented? Daniel Miessler (Oct 04)
- Re: Is Pentesting Goal Oriented, or Coverage Oriented? Michal Zalewski (Oct 05)
- Re: Is Pentesting Goal Oriented, or Coverage Oriented? Zack Payton (Oct 05)
- Re: Is Pentesting Goal Oriented, or Coverage Oriented? Jerome Athias (Oct 05)
- Re: Is Pentesting Goal Oriented, or Coverage Oriented? Ramki B Ramakrishnan (Oct 05)
- Re: Is Pentesting Goal Oriented, or Coverage Oriented? Chris Griffin (Oct 05)
- Re: Is Pentesting Goal Oriented, or Coverage Oriented? David Howe (Oct 06)
- Re: Is Pentesting Goal Oriented, or Coverage Oriented? Kevin L. Shaw, CISSP, GCIH (Oct 05)
- Re: Is Pentesting Goal Oriented, or Coverage Oriented? Chris Brenton (Oct 05)
- Re: Is Pentesting Goal Oriented, or Coverage Oriented? Marco Ivaldi (Oct 05)
- Re: Is Pentesting Goal Oriented, or Coverage Oriented? Robin Wood (Oct 05)
- Re: Is Pentesting Goal Oriented, or Coverage Oriented? Tim (Oct 05)
- Re: Is Pentesting Goal Oriented, or Coverage Oriented? Taras (Oct 06)