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Pen Testing Explained
This document provides an overview of penetration testing, including its definition, purpose, types, methodology, tools, challenges, and takeaways. Penetration testing involves modeling real-world attacks to find vulnerabilities in a system and then attempting to exploit those vulnerabilities to determine security risks. It is important for identifying flaws that need remediation and assessing an organization's security posture and risk profile. The methodology generally involves planning, reconnaissance, scanning, exploitation, and reporting phases. Challenges include performing comprehensive testing within time and budget constraints and addressing business impact.
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Pen Testing Explained
- 1. 1 Enterprise Security /System Integrity Penetration Testing Explained Rand Hirt, CISSP, CISA, GPEN Sr. Security Analyst - Enterprise Security
- 2. 2 Enterprise Security /System Integrity Agenda for Today • What is Penetration Testing? – Definition – Purpose – Connection to Vulnerabilities/Exploits – Types of Pen Tests – Outcomes • Why Pen Test? – Regulatory Requirements – Risk Profile determination • How to Pen Test? – Pen Test Methodology – Reporting – Penetration Testing Framework and PTES – Tools - Open Source – Tools – Commercial • Challenges • Takeaways
- 3. 3 Enterprise Security /System Integrity What is Penetration Testing? Definition • Definition = the exact meaning of a word. Despite that, security testing vendors define their services differently using the same words, often incorrectly. • Penetration Test = An approach, modeling tactics of real- world bad guys, to find vulnerabilities - then under controlled circumstances, exploit those vulnerabilities and determine business risk. • Vulnerability Scan (or Security Assessment) = finding security vulnerabilities, which may or may not be used to get in or steal data. Vulnerability (or Security) Assessment ≠ Penetration Test Penetration test = focus is on actually getting in and/or stealing data.
- 4. 4 Enterprise Security /System Integrity What is Penetration Testing? – continued Purpose • The ultimate goal is discovering flaws so that they can be remediated (applying patches, reconfiguring systems, altering the architecture, changing processes, etc.). Connection of Vulnerabilities/Exploits to Risk • Threat = an actor or agent that may want to or actually can cause harm to the targeted organization. • Vulnerability = flaw that an attacker could use to cause damage. • Exploit = the vehicle by which the attacker uses a vulnerability to cause damage to the target system.
- 5. 5 Enterprise Security /System Integrity What is Penetration Testing? – continued Connection to Vulnerabilities/Exploits How this plays together: Risk is where threat and vulnerability overlap. That is, we have a risk when our systems have a vulnerability that a given threat can attack.
- 6. 6 Enterprise Security /System Integrity What is Penetration Testing? – continued Types of Penetration Tests • Network services test – Most common – finding target systems on a network. • Client-Side test – Designed to find exploit client-side software, such as browsers, media players, doc editing programs, etc. • Web Application test – Targets web-based applications in the target environment. • Remote war dial test – Looks for modems in the target environment and includes password guessing to attempt connecting. • Wireless security test – Targets the physical environment to find unauthorized wireless access points or insecure access points. • Social engineering test – Attempts to dupe a user into revealing sensitive information or clicking on a malicious link in an email.
- 7. 7 Enterprise Security /System Integrity What is Penetration Testing? – continued Outcomes To be successful, need to express our pen test findings in both business and technical terms. For any given risk, decision makers may conclude that, for business purposes, they will accept a given risk identified during a test, rather than mitigate the associated vulnerability. In the end, it’s a business decision.
- 8. 8 Enterprise Security /System Integrity Why Pen Test? Regulatory Requirements Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standard (DSS) mandates at least an annual pen test be performed on the Cardholder Data Environment (CDE), and/or if significant infrastructure or application upgrades occur (PCI DSS 11.3).
- 9. 9 Enterprise Security /System Integrity Why Pen Test? - continued Risk Profile determination The overall objective is to reduce risk by examining the company’s actual attack surface. Attack surface = the sum of all potential attack vectors. Attack vector = any single parameter (that is also vulnerable) that can be attacked. EXAMPLE: Networked services like File Transfer Protocol (FTP), Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) and Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) contain unique parameters, each of which could be exploited if not adequately protected.
- 10. 10 Enterprise Security /System Integrity How to Pen Test? Pen Test Methodology 1. Scoping/Planning/Goal – Constraints and limitations imposed on the team i.e. Out of scope items, hardware, IP addresses. – Constraints, limitations or problems encountered by the team during the actual test 2. Reconnaissance – The tester would attempt to gather as much information as possible about the selected network. Reconnaissance can take two forms i.e. active and passive. A passive attack is always the best starting point as this would normally defeat intrusion detection systems and other forms of protection etc. afforded to the network. This would usually involve trying to discover publicly available information by utilizing a web browser and visiting newsgroups etc. An active form would be more intrusive and may show up in audit logs and may take the form of an attempted DNS zone transfer or a social engineering type of attack.
- 11. 11 Enterprise Security /System Integrity How to Pen Test?- continued Pen Test Methodology 3. Scanning – By use of vulnerability scanners all discovered hosts would be tested for vulnerabilities. The result would then be analyzed to determine if there any vulnerabilities that could be exploited to gain access to a target host on a network. 4. Exploitation – By use of published exploits or weaknesses found in applications, operating system and services, access would then be attempted. This may be done surreptitiously or by more brute force methods. An example of this would be the use of exploit engines i.e. Metasploit or password cracking tools such as John the Ripper.
- 12. 12 Enterprise Security /System Integrity How to Pen Test? - continued Pen Test Methodology 5. (optional) Covering Tracks – The ability to erase logs that may have detected the testing teams attempts to access the network should ideally not be possible. These logs are the first piece of evidence that may prove that a possible breach of company security has occurred and should be protected at all costs. An attempt to erase or alter these logs should prove unsuccessful to ensure that if a malicious attacker did in fact get access to the network then their every movement would be recorded.
- 13. 13 Enterprise Security /System Integrity How to Pen Test? - continued Reporting Reporting is crucial for sharing the findings of the penetration test. It should not just be a “cut & paste” process from the tool. It must have some business impact analysis as well as quantify the business risk of the findings. Reports are not for impressing other pen testers. Its for operations personnel to understand the risks and help them mitigate the vulnerabilities.
- 14. 14 Enterprise Security /System Integrity How to Pen Test? - continued Penetration Testing Framework and PTES • Open-source testing methodologies exist: – Open Source Security Testing Methodology Manual (OSSTMM) – Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) – Penetration Testing Framework (www.vulnerabilityassessment.co.uk/Penetration%20Test.ht ml) – Penetration Testing Execution Standard (http://pentest- standard.org/index.php/Main_Page)
- 15. 15 Enterprise Security /System Integrity How to Pen Test? - continued Tools - Open Source • Nessus (now commercial version by Tenable Security) • Metasploit (now owned by Rapid7) • Backtrack CD (discontinued Linux distro. with open- source security tools – now Kali Linux)
- 16. 16 Enterprise Security /System Integrity How to Pen Test? - continued Tools - Commercial • Immunity CANVAS Pro • WebInspect - HP SPI Dynamics • CORE IMPACT & CORE Insight Enterprise
- 17. 17 Enterprise Security /System Integrity Challenges Bad (RCPT) vs. Good Pen Testing Really Crappy Pen Test (RCPT) - not thoroughly testing all attributes of the attack surface, or even worse, using vulnerability scan results and calling it a penetration test. A good pen test is comprehensive and looks at threat levels at least equal to those likely to be faced in the wild and performs testing at that level.
- 18. 18 Enterprise Security /System Integrity Challenges - continued Skill level Real pen testers are highly skilled professional, usually certified to show competency, use formalized methodology, and respect the business requirements of the company. They view pen testing as a logical, analytical process. It is not just the output product of an automated scanner (like the ones discussed earlier).
- 19. 19 Enterprise Security /System Integrity Challenges - continued Potential adverse impacts The goal of a penetration test is not to just cause all sorts of damage and expect that someone else gets to clean up the mess. The goal is to attempt to achieve the objective as safely and with as little impact as possible. However, if you do pen testing long enough, at some point you will “knock something over” (a system may go unresponsive), so proper Change Management is crucial in order to account for unexpected results.
- 20. 20 Enterprise Security /System Integrity Challenges - continued Time/Money constraints Penetration tests are inherently constrained by time and/or financial resources. For a specific engagement, scoping of the pen test is crucial to success. Also to be taken into consideration, is the intensity of the testing to mimic the hacker level most concerning (script kiddie, skilled hacker, and elite hacker).
- 21. 21 Enterprise Security /System Integrity Challenges - continued Failure to address Business impact A good pen test not only validates identified vulnerabilities, but also discusses the business impact if the vulnerabilities are exploited. In addition, there should also be recommendations on how to effectively remediate those verified vulnerabilities.
- 22. 22 Enterprise Security /System Integrity Takeaways There are many reasons to conduct a penetration test: • Compliance: Security standards like PCI require at least annual penetration testing. • Measuring Risk: This can inform management where weaknesses are present and the level of risk they present. • Diligence: Testing to determine if software developed internally using a Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) has met secure development practices and hasn’t presented opportunities to be attacked and exploited.
- 23. 23 Enterprise Security /System Integrity Questions?