Preface

Why write a book about hacking? The question is really whether a book about the techniques and tools used to break into a network would be beneficial to the information security community. We, the authors, believe that penetration testing is a valuable and effective means of identifying security holes and weaknesses in a network and computing environment. Understanding how others will try to break into a network offers considerable insight into the common pitfalls and misconfigurations that make networks vulnerable. This insight is essential to creating a comprehensive network security structure.

Some may argue that providing this penetration-testing information gives script kiddies and hackers ammunition to better attack systems. However, script kiddies and hackers already have access to this information or have the time to find it—most of the material presented in this book is available from a variety of sources on the Internet. The problem is that the system and security administrators defending against attacks do not have the time or resources to research the sites necessary to compile this information. We decided to write this book to provide defenders with the information hackers already have. A hacker has to find only one hole to gain unauthorized access. The security group defending against the hackers needs to find all the holes to prevent unauthorized access.

There is no tried-and-true training that can make everyone a security expert, but there are some baseline principles, skills, and tools that must be mastered to become proficient in this field. Our goal is to provide you with those skills in a manner that helps you to understand the structure and tools used and to begin developing your own style of penetration testing.

The process described in this book is not the only way to perform a penetration test. We continue to evolve our own methodology to respond to new technologies and threats. This process has worked well for us in the past and continues to be a successful way to evaluate and test network security.