Penetration Testing Methodologies: Why and How to Follow Them

Penetration testing is one of the most important steps you can take to protect your business. By following a set of penetration testing methodologies, you can ensure that your systems are secure and that any vulnerabilities are identified and fixed.

In this article, we will discuss why it’s important to follow a set of penetration testing methodologies, what those methodologies are, and where you can find resources to help you get started.

Why Is Following Penetration Testing Methodologies Important?

Penetration testing is a critical step in protecting your business from cyberattacks. By following a set of penetration testing methodologies, you can ensure that your systems are secure and that any vulnerabilities are identified and fixed.

In this article, we will discuss why it’s important to follow a set of penetration testing methodologies by discussing the importance of identifying vulnerabilities before hackers do so first. We’ll also look at how following these methodologies will help you avoid common pitfalls when conducting pen tests on your own company’s network or system infrastructure.

What Are The Methodologies For Penetration Testing?

There are many different methods for conducting penetration tests, but they all share one common goal: to identify security weaknesses within an organization’s systems so that they can be fixed. The most common methodologies for penetration testing include the following:

• Threat modeling: This methodology helps you identify and assess potential threats to your system. It involves creating a model of your system, identifying the assets within it, and then assessing the risk posed by each asset.

• Vulnerability scanning: The goal of this technique is to scan your systems for known vulnerabilities with the aid of software. You can repair these flaws before they are exploited by hackers by identifying them.

• Penetration testing: In this type of test, ethical hackers attempt to exploit vulnerabilities in your systems in order to gain access to sensitive data or damage your infrastructure.

Where Can I Find Resources For Penetration Testing Methodologies?

There are several resources accessible online if you want to learn more about how to apply a set of penetration testing techniques.

Resources for Penetration Testing Methodologies:

• The Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) has a number of resources available on their website that can help organizations understand and implement application security best practices, including the Top Ten most common attacks.
• NIST also publishes guidelines for information security that can be helpful when performing penetration tests. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has a detailed guide on conducting vulnerability assessments that can help you get started.
• The University of Denver has an online course on ethical hacking that goes through the fundamentals of penetration testing.
• ISACA offers a variety of resources related to information security, including an overview of common attack vectors and how to defend against them.
• SANS Institute offers courses and certifications related to information security that can help organizations improve their security posture, including the GIAC Penetration Tester (GPEN) certification course.

Follow these resources to learn more about how to conduct a safe and effective penetration test on your organization’s systems. You can prevent cyberattacks by following a set of established procedures.

Most Common Penetration Attacks In OWASP 10

The Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to providing information about application security. OWASP publishes the Top Ten most common attacks, which are:

• Injection flaws: Flaws that allow an attacker to inject malicious code into webpages or other applications. This can include SQL injection, cross-site scripting (XSS), and OS command injection.

• Broken authentication and session management: Issues with the authentication process and/or session management that could allow attackers to gain access to resources they should not have access to. This includes issues like session ID theft, weak passwords, and cookies being sent over insecure channels.

• Cross-site scripting (XSS): A vulnerability that allows an attacker to inject malicious code into a web page, which is then executed by unsuspecting users who visit the page.

• Broken access control: Incorrectly created security measures, such as permissions and access controls, that might give unauthorized users access to sensitive data or systems.

• Security misconfiguration: Incorrectly configured systems and applications that leave them open to attack. This includes issues like default accounts with passwords still set, unsecured servers hosting sensitive data, and leaving debug features enabled on production systems.

• Insecure communications: Weaknesses in the way information is transferred between systems that can be exploited by attackers. This includes using outdated encryption methods, not verifying SSL/TLS certificates, and man-in-the-middle attacks.

• Insufficient logging and monitoring: Not tracking activity or having the ability to track activity on systems can make it difficult to determine what happened during an attack and how it was perpetrated. This also includes not reviewing logs regularly for signs of malicious activity.

• Tampering with data: Modifying information either intentionally or unintentionally that can jeopardize the security or integrity of a system or application.

• Cross-site request forgery (CSRF): A vulnerability that allows an attacker to inject illegitimate requests from a user who is currently logged into a site. If the target site trusts the injected request, it will execute whatever action was specified by the attacker, without the knowledge or consent of the user.

The items on this list are not comprehensive, and new attacks are being discovered all the time. These are some of the most prevalent cyber attacks seen in today’s networks. It is important to be aware of them and take steps to protect your systems from them.

How To Follow These Methodologies?

The best way to follow these methodologies is by using a penetration testing tool. There are many tools available online that can help you conduct an effective penetration test on your organization’s systems. What Is A Penetration Testing Tool?

Penetration testing tools are designed to enable the scanning and analysis of computer networks for vulnerabilities, which allows organizations to find and fix them before they are exploited by malicious hackers.

The most popular tool is Nessus Professional from Tenable Network Security Inc., but there are others such as Astra’s Pentest, Metasploit Pro (from Rapid Seven), CANVAS (Immunity Inc.), Core Impact Pro (Core Security Technologies), or SAINT Corp.’s product line with its well-known SAINT scanner toolkit.

Penetration Testing Methodology Procedure

Penetration testing methodology is a set of procedures and techniques used in conducting penetration tests on computer networks. It consists of five steps:

1. Information Gathering

This phase is critical because it gives the tester an understanding of what’s on your network and how it’s configured so that they can find vulnerabilities within those systems or applications before launching attacks against them. It may include scanning for open ports using Nmap (a popular command-line tool), running vulnerability scans with Nessus or OpenVAS (both free tools). These steps help determine if there are any known exploits out there that could be used during the exploitation stage later in this process by identifying which patches have been installed since their release date/time as well as whether services such as FTP allow anonymous access without authentication credentials required from users logging into these services remotely via telnet or ssh.

2. Vulnerability Analysis

This step involves finding vulnerabilities within systems on your network based on information gathered during phase one (information gathering). It may include running Nessus, OpenVAS, or similar tools against individual hosts in order to discover which ports are open and what operating system versions they are running so that the tester knows if there any known exploits out there for those particular hosts/services being targeted by an attacker looking to gain a foothold inside your infrastructure as part of their reconnaissance efforts towards gaining access into other areas where sensitive data might reside such as databases containing credit card numbers etcetera.

3. Exploitation

Once you’ve found vulnerabilities in your target system, you can use tools like Metasploit (open source) or Astra’s Pentest (commercial) to exploit them.

4. Post-Exploitation

This phase involves conducting post-exploitation activities such as installing malware on targeted systems, exfiltrating data from databases containing sensitive information like credit cards etcetera so that attackers have an easier time of gaining access into other parts where more valuable assets reside once they’ve found their way inside your infrastructure through either one successful attack vector being exploited by them during vulnerability analysis stages earlier in this process or multiple ones simultaneously against various hosts throughout your network perimeter which could lead up towards taking advantage over entire domains as part of their overall objectives

5. Reporting

Once all phases above are and vulnerabilities are identified, it’s important to write up a comprehensive report detailing findings and providing recommendations for remediation. Reports should be clear, concise, and easy to understand by those without a technical background in order to help business stakeholders make informed decisions about the security posture of their organization.

Tips For Pentesting Novices

There are a few things that pentesters can do to increase the chances of success during their engagements:

• Use automated tools wherever possible as they help speed up the process and reduce the chances of human error.
• Follow a technique similar to the previous ones (OWASP, NIST, etc.) in order to keep your tests consistent and repeatable. This also allows for better reporting at the end of an engagement.
• Create custom payloads or exploits whenever possible rather than relying on ones that have been publicly released as they may be patched by the time you attempt to use them in your environment.
• Try to gain access into systems through legitimate channels whenever possible (e.g., logins with valid credentials) as opposed to using exploits that could be detected by IDS/IPS products if they are running within your network perimeter and watching for such things happening on it.
• Stay up-to-date with current news about vulnerabilities being discovered across various platforms so that you know what kinds of attacks might work against them before testing any systems yourself (e.g., Twitter, Slashdot). You’ll also want to make sure there aren’t any patches available for these issues yet either otherwise this could result in failure due or lack thereof during the pentest phase when attempting to exploit known software flaws on targeted machines.

Conclusion

Penetration testing is an important part of security and should be done regularly by organizations who want to stay ahead in today’s world where cyberattacks are becoming increasingly common.

A penetration test can take anywhere from one day for a small business with few assets, to several months if you’re working on behalf of an enterprise client that has thousands upon thousands of systems across multiple data centers around the globe.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Ankit Pahuja is the Marketing Lead & Evangelist at Astra Security. Ever since his adulthood (literally, he was 20 years old), he began finding vulnerabilities in websites & network infrastructures. Starting his professional career as a software engineer at one of the unicorns enables him in bringing “engineering in marketing” to reality. Working actively in the cybersecurity space for more than 2 years makes him the perfect T-shaped marketing professional. Ankit is an avid speaker in the security space and has delivered various talks in top companies, early-age startups, and online events.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/ankit-pahuja/