Penetration Testing, A Cybersecurity Measurement to do after Vulnerability Assessment

What is Penetration testing? 

Penetration Testing, pentest in short, or ethical hacking is the process of examining vulnerabilities in applications or equipment to exploit those vulnerabilities and bypassing or defeating the components of a security system through rigorous manual testing.  

These vulnerabilities can be due to incorrect configuration, insecure code, poorly constructed structures, or sensitive information disclosure, among other things. The output is an actionable report that describes any vulnerabilities, the actions taken to exploit them, along with details on how to fix them and other recommendations.  

Each identified vulnerability is assigned a potential risk level to enable corrective actions to be taken. 

Penetration testing stage. 

1. Pre-participation 

Before the start of the pentest, the testers have a pre-interaction with the client to make sure everyone is on the same page for the penetration test. Bad communication between tester and customer who expects that simple vulnerability analysis can lead to a sticky situation because penetration analysis makes it worse. 

The pre-participation process of the pentest includes the following: 

• Scope, the scope of the acceptance test defines the purpose, scope, and depth of the analysis. Defining the scope of a penetration test is critical to its success - the scope ultimately determines the purpose, effort, cost, and technical scope of the test. Scoping is also key to identifying the right areas of expertise needed to conduct the best placement tests. 

• Gathering Information, we collect public information or internal information about the target while conducting active research and searches that we may use during our process. 

2 Vulnerability Analysis 

Information gathering is the first part of a penetration test in which we collect public information or internal information about the target while conducting active research and searches that we may use. during our process. 

3 Exploitation (the actual pentest is here).  

During this period of exploitation, penetration testers attempt to overcome security vulnerabilities. Exploits are designed to, for example, gather sensitive information or allow aspirants to compromise the system and identify themselves in it. Once a system is sufficiently compromised, it is possible to break into other systems, while testers now gain access to other targets that were not previously available, for example, because the compromised system can interact with a system that is not. can be accessed through the internet. 

4 Reporting 

Penetration test reports provide an in-depth analysis of vulnerabilities discovered during testing. It shows the threat level and the steps to fix the vulnerability. A pentest report is a primary document that guides an organization's mediation efforts.  

Penetration Testing Methods 

There are various ways to modify or compromise computer systems and facilitate computer attacks system. 

1 Network-based attacks 

A "network-based attack" is an attack on a network environment, computer system, and/or applications that use network protocol features. This type of attack uses weaknesses or the hardware and software have not been modified to support or carry out attacks. Network-based attacks include port scanning, IP address spoofing, spoofing, session hijacking, DoS attacks, high density and string attack techniques, and other exploits vulnerabilities in operating systems, software, and network systems. 

2 Social Engineering 

A social engineering attack is an attempt to manipulate people with the knowledge of action to create and expose security-related information such as passwords to the attacker. For example, the attacker can pretend to be a corporate IT employee and trick an unsuspecting user into revealing his network password. The range of possible combat situations is very wide with this method. In its broadest sense, social work can also cover situations where security-related information is obtained through extortion.  

3 Changes in the body's defense system 

There can be no IT security without the physical security of the technical equipment. If the body's security measures and access to computer systems can be compromised, and this is usually the only way shortly before an attack or control of the application and stored data can occur. An example and this is usually the only way shortly before an attack or control of the application and stored data can occur. An example and this is usually the only way shortly before an attack or control of the application and stored data can occur. An example is unauthorized access to the company's computer network, the hard drive on which confidential data is stored. This group also includes searches for the disposal of documents containing security-related information (disposal). 

Conclusion: The Difference between Penetration Testing and Vulnerability Assessment  

Vulnerability Assessment and Penetration Testing. Each of these tests has its strengths, and they are often used together to make a complete analysis of cybersecurity testing. In short, Penetration Testing and Vulnerability Assessments are two different things that are done in the same cybersecurity area but usually have different results, so they will be used for different objectives. 

Vulnerability Assessment is the process of analyzing a system or software or network to identify its weaknesses and defects. These people's failure to identify weakness can give an attacker a backdoor to attack the victim. 

Penetration testing is the next step when the evaluation result is weak. The temptation to get into it is to try to exploit a systematic approach to make sure the vulnerabilities are exploitable by hackers. In penetration testing, the examiner can perform a penetration that deliberately exploits the system and identify which vulnerabilities are exploitable.  

A vulnerability assessment identifies weaknesses and suggests solutions to address them. On the other side, penetration testing will answer whether an attacker can break into the system and what losses result from these exploitable vulnerabilities.