Penetration Tester’s Open Source Toolkit
reviewed by Robert Pritchett
Authors: Johnny Long, http://www.oreillynet.com/cs/catalog/view/au/1918 Aaron W. Bayles, http://www.oreillynet.com/cs/catalog/view/au/2105 James C. Foster, http://www.oreillynet.com/cs/catalog/view/au/1865 Chris Hurley, http://www.oreillynet.com/cs/catalog/view/au/1381 Noam Rathaus, SensePost, Mark Wolfgang, Mike Petruzzi Author website: http://www.remote-exploit.org Syngress Publishing Booksites: http://www.syngress.com/catalog/?pid=3330 Downloadable Ebook: http://www.syngress.com/catalog/?pid=3335 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/1597490210/index.html Published: December 2005. Pages: 750 $60 USD, $84 CND, £33 GBP, 51€ EUR with Bootable Linux CD. ISBN: 9781597490210 Requirements: Linux knowledge and a desire to understand penetration testing. Strengths: A one-stop-shop for penetration testing tools. Weaknesses: Not intended for the Mac environment. Tutorials: http://www.remote-exploit.org/index.php/Tutorials |
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Penetration Tester’s Open Source Toolkit by the authors listed above is the User’s Guide to the included Linux-based CD that has the Auditor Security Collection from http://www.remote-exploit.org. These are around 300 Open Source security and forensics tools for both the Windows and Linux environments.
Of course, the 2nd thing I did when I got the book was to see if any of the tools were Mac-compatible. Folks, they will require recompiling to run on a Mac. Oh, and I got weird looks when I brought this book into the office as management and others quickly scanned the cover and wondered if there were any sexual connotations with this thick book.
Thankfully, this book basically records the hows and whys of pentesting networks and computer systems and shows the process as both art and science.
Tools covered deal with hijacking, sniffing, scanning, and vulnerability assessment. You may have heard of dsniff, ettercap, Ethereal, Hydra, the Metasploit Framework; Nessus, Nmap, Paketto, Paros, Scanrand.
The book is divided into 13 chapters covering reconnaissance, enumerating, scanning and testing databases, web application and server testing, wireless penetration testing, writing Open Source security tools, and analyzing network devices along with coverage of a few tools. These would be coding Nessus, doing NASL extensions and running custom tests and extending Metasploit I and II.
The CD contains the 300 or so Auditor tools listed here: http://www.remote-exploit.org/index.php/Auditor_tools and covers footprinting, scanning, analyzing, spoofing, Bluetooth and wireless, brute force, password cracking, forensics and honeypot tools. These were collected and published by Max Moser.
By combining both Whax and this CD, a new one has come out known as BackTrack as a boot disc and can be downloaded at: http://www.iwhax.net/index.php/BackTrack_Downloads and is a 625MB download with 3 fixes to the beta as of the time this review was posted.
If you work in a heterogenous environment and want one place where all these tools can be found and a book that discusses these topics, get this one. Maybe the authors will also treat the Mac environment in the next edition.
For pentesting on a Mac, check this out. Many of the tools off the remote-Exploit website are usable on a Mac:
http://blogs.securiteam.com/index.php/archives/246 and load up using Darwin Ports.
