External Penetration Testing is the process of assessing a network for external vulnerabilities and if found performing a controlled attack to verify the results. This type of test is valuable in determining an organization's overall security posture.
To ensure a safe and thorough Penetration Test our team follows a structured methodology that includes the following steps: Discovery, Enumeration, Researching, Exploitation and Reporting.
Discovery
Discovery is one the most important components and is often overlooked. Valuable information about the target organization is available from sources such as whois databases, search engines and other publicly available sites.
Enumeration
Once the discovery phase has yielded information such as domain names, host names and network boundaries, ie; firewalls, routers and intrusion detection systems, the testing team will attempt to extract as much information as possible about each component. This information is gathered through the use of various tools and procedures:
- Port scanning
- SNMP
- Null Session
- NetBIOS browsing
- Vulnerability scanners
Research
From the data gathered in phase I and phase II we will use the following databases (as an example) to determine how your vulnerabilities can be exposed and exploited.
- Security Focus
- Packet Storm
- CERT
- SANS
- MITRE
Exploitation
In this phase the testing team will attempt to exploit the vulnerabilities that have been identified in the mapping phase. Various techniques will be used depending on the vulnerabilities discovered:
- Brute Force / Dictionary Attacks
- Bad Input / Buffer Overflows
- Software Vulnerabilities
- Social Engineering
Reporting
The Project will provide the Client with the final report containing the following:
- Executive Summary
- Technical Executive Summary
- Observations and Recommendations
|
