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Best Penetration Testing Resources for Beginners
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Penetration Testing Overview
Penetration testing simulates a real-world cyber-attack on any firm or company. A penetration tester is a network security consultant, they find possible breaches in your system.
They generally are expected to run various tests and generate an assessment sheet that will explain vulnerability in the network or system.
Here we will go through all the necessary vulnerability assessment and penetration testing resources.
Tools Necessary for Starting Penetration Testing
Kali Linux
An open-source project by Offensive Security. Kali is a Debian-based operating system made for advanced Penetration testing and security audits.
Why Kali Linux?
- Lots of inbuilt Pentest tools included like:
- Hydra
- John The Ripper
- Aircrack-ng
- Open-source
- Custom kernel, patched for injection
- Secure environment
- Filesystem Hierarchy Standard compliant
Nessus
Nessus is a vulnerability scanner developed and maintained by Tenable. It is also known as a “Remote scanner” as it doesn’t need to be installed on a specific machine. Nessus scans vulnerabilities related to the provided IP.
Why Nessus?
- Nessus is very extensible, providing a scripting language for you to write tests.
- Provides multiple special-purpose plugins.
- Vulnerability patch assistance
- Updated information of the latest attacks and vulnerabilities.
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Burp Suite
Burp Suite is a vulnerability scanner by PortSwigger, basically used for web security. It can be used to test loopholes in website security by intercepting and analyzing packet.
Why Burp?
- Wide range of automating plugins
- Easy to use
- Scheduled and repeat scans
- Unlimited scalability
- CI integration
Essential Manual Tools
OWASP Top 10 Vulnerability and Preventions
These are very important from the point of view of your website. Do check if you have some vulnerabilities in your website.
Metasploit
Metasploit is used to find security issues. It also manages security assessment and vulnerability mitigations. Metasploit is a penetration testing platform that enables you to exploit and validate vulnerabilities also.
Why Metasploit?
- Open-source
- Free tool
- Huge list of exploits and payloads
- Widely used and trusted in the IT security community
Acunetix
Fully automated web security testing platform. Makes tester’s task easy which was previously going to take hours. Test for thousands of web application vulnerabilities (including SQL Injection, XSS) as well as misconfigurations.
Why Acunetix?
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- Supports HTML5, JavaScript and also CMS systems.
- Easy reporting
- Issue Tracker integration
- Very high-speed testing platform
Conclusion
Have you performed any penetration testing? If yes then You would have used above listed penetration testing tools.
If you know about other useful penetration testing resources we haven’t mentioned in this list, please let us know in the comment section below.
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