nmap

Report by Miguel Bigueur & Les Davis

Figure 1. Anatomy of a URL and Web Server Architecture.

The intent to manipulate URL inputs is a method of infiltration utilized by criminals as a means of legitimacy. The goal here is to masquerade as legitimate traffic in an effort to penetrate firewalls uninhibited, while bypassing all pre-established defense mechanisms. Once this is achieved, an attacker is afforded the opportunity to escalate privileges with an opportunity to engage in lateral movements.

A few tools that can be used to help discover vulnerabilities in web and mail servers include: Continue reading →

nextgov-medium

The purpose of this document is to perform a penetration test using two different methodologies to exploit and gain unauthorized access to vulnerable computer systems using a set of penetration testing tools including, Nexpose, Kali Linux, and Metasploitable. These tools are designed to demonstrate common vulnerabilities and subsequently exploit them, which allows security administrators to formulate a plan in regards to remediation and prevention of an actual attack. The purpose of penetration testing is to attempt to access resources without knowing usernames, passwords, and/or any other means of authorized security authentication procedures that may exist for a particular organization or individual. An important thing to consider is the only thing differentiating a penetration tester (White Hat Hacker) from an attacker (Black Hat Hacker) is permission from the attacked to allow it to happen.

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