> .ROLE
PENETRATION TESTER, CYBERSECURITY CONSULTANT
> .DETAILS
The first step an attacker takes to breach the perimeter of a network is to do some external recon. This can take many forms, and the results will dictate the next actions performed. While most organizations have good coverage of their external infrastructure, it is very common for a few hosts to be missed during patching or reconfiguring for security updates.
So, our job as penetration testers is to find those “forgotten hosts” and then exploit the vulnerabilities that we identify. In this instance, the vulnerable machine has been identified for you, and now it’s up to you to fingerprint it and compromise it however you can. There are often multiple ways to compromise a host, and it’s up to you to determine the “best way” (ie, least likely to take down the machine to the ease of compromise). Then, once you have gained access, attempt to escalate privileges so that you can then document additional findings.
> .TECHNOLOGY
KALI LINUX, UBUNTU LINUX SERVER, VMWARE