Planning a Penetration Test

Types of Penetration Tests There are basically three types of penetration testing: white box, black box, and gray box. White Box Testing White box testing is when the testing team has access to network diagrams, asset records, and other useful information. This method is used when time is of the essence and when budgets are … Read more

Metasploit: The Big Picture

Metasploit is a free, downloadable framework that makes it very easy to acquire, develop, and launch exploits for computer software vulnerabilities. It ships with professional-grade exploits for hundreds of known software vulnerabilities. When H.D. Moore released Metasploit in 2003, it permanently changed the computer security scene. Suddenly, anyone could become a hacker and everyone had … Read more

BackTrack: The Big Picture

BackTrack is a free, well-designed penetration-testing Linux workstation built and refined by professional security engineers. It has all the tools necessary for penetration testing, and they are all configured properly, have the dependent libraries installed, and are carefully categorized in the start menu. Everything just works. BackTrack is distributed as an ISO disk image that … Read more

Securely Protect Yourself Against Cyber Trespass Act (SPY Act)

The Securely Protect Yourself Against Cyber Trespass (SPY Act) was passed by the House of Representatives, but never voted on by the Senate. Several versions have existed since 2004, but the bill has not become law as of this writing. The SPY Act would provide many specifics on what would be prohibited and punishable by … Read more

The Rise of Cyberlaw

Today’s CEOs and management not only need to worry about profit margins, market analysis, and mergers and acquisitions; now they also need to step into a world of practicing security with due care, understanding and complying with new government privacy and information security regulations, risking civil and criminal liability for security failures (including the possibility … Read more

Using Brace Expansion

The ultimate labor-saving trick at the command-line is brace expansion. Put simply, anything within braces ({}) is substituted within the specified filename. The following will create new directories called PhotosGermany, PhotosEngland, and PhotosSpain: mkdir Photos{Germany,England,Spain} In other words, the mkdir command takes the word Photos and combines it with Germany, England, and Spain, creating three … Read more