Ethical Hacking, Volume 6

Volume 6 follows an attack on a system from the first foothold to the last trace, so that you know what defenders are up against. It opens with the definition and types of ethical system hacking and the ethical and legal considerations that separate a professional from an intruder.

The chapters follow the attack in order. Gaining access through reconnaissance, port scanning and enumeration, banner grabbing, network mapping and social engineering. Cracking passwords with brute-force, dictionary, hybrid, rainbow-table and mask attacks, using Hashcat, John the Ripper, Cain and Abel, Hydra and Aircrack-ng, and the practices that protect passwords. Exploiting vulnerabilities such as buffer overflows, SQL injection, cross-site scripting, file inclusion and remote code execution with frameworks like Metasploit, Burp Suite and BeEF. Escalating privileges locally and remotely, and mitigating it. Maintaining access with backdoors, rootkits and persistence, and the measures that prevent it. Executing applications, including malware, spyware and keyloggers. Hiding files with steganography and encryption. Clearing logs, and how log analysis and forensics catch it. Each chapter ends with discussion questions and a quiz, answered at the back.

After reading it, you will be able to describe every stage of a system attack, recognize the tools used at each one, and put in place the defenses that break the chain.