jolenzy's blog

First of all, what is penetration testing?

It's a process of establishing weaknesses in a computer infrastructure or network. A team of specialists uses real-world hacking techniques to exploit targeted system or network. This process is also known as Vulnerability Assessment or Ethical Hacking.

There are two main approaches of a comprehensive penetration test, black-box testing and white-box testing. Black-box testing is conducting a test with no prior knowledge of the infrastructure, while white-box testing is conducting a test with a complete knowledge of the network infrastructure.

Steps in penetration testing should be:
1. Information Gathering - gathering maximum information on the remote host/organization
2. Fingerprinting/Footprinting - getting detailed information on remote host
4. Services Identification - port scanning, finding vulnerable services
5. Evading Firewall Rules - firewall evasion techniques are used to bypass firewall rules
6. Vulnerability Scanning - identifying, understanding and verifying the weaknesses, misconfigurations and vulnerabilities associated with remote host
7. Exploiting Services - the weaknesses found in the remote services are exploited
8. Password Cracking - validating password strength
9. Denial of Service Testing - denial of service attacks
10. Escalation of Privileges - elevation id privileges is the type of rights the attacker gains over the remote system

Of course, some steps can have different order, some of steps are not so imortant as others, but it all depends of situation and system we are testing.
I'm going to write a lot about every step, you just keep visiting and reading :)