Infrastructure Penetration Testing Realities

Penetration testing is just like being a cybercriminal, right?

Honestly, it feels weird writing this, however I feel there’s a real issue with penetration testing and some myths that (for understandable and obvious reasons) exist in some people’s minds. So I’ve taken to trying to explain to people what an external penetration test actually entails in the real world of business. So here goes!

Defense

Vulnerability Management – Actually doing it!

Vulnerability Management, Assessments and Vulnerability scanning is sometimes treated a with distain in the Offensive security community, I personally don’t understand that. Vulnerability management is key to inputting into security strategy, architecture, and operations. It’s coupled heavily to many other processes such as:

Asset Management
Risk Management
Patch Management
Change & Release Management
Security Testing
Security Monitoring

Before we start deploying let’s think about some areas for consideration when performing vulnerability scans:

Scope
- Asset/Hosts
  - IP Ranges
  - Hostnames
- Connectivity
  - VPNs
  - LAN/WAN
- Device Types and Configuration
  - Domain
  - Workgroup
  - Appliance
  - ICS
  - Printers
  - Network Equipment
- Unauthenticated View
- Authenticated View
  - Auth Types
  - Protocols
- Scheduling
- Authority to execute
Impact
- Performance
- Availability
- Confidentiality
Objectives and Outcomes
Reporting
- Information Flow
- Report Storage and Confidentiality

Defense

My MSBlaster Story

We looked after about 3-3500 endpoint devices. We were running Windows servers/clients and we leveraged technologies such as:

Dameware Tools
Remote Desktop Protocol
GFI LanGuard
RCP/SMB/WMI
McAfee Antivirus

Defense

Thoughts on IOCs for Exchange Hafnium/ProxyLogon

Intro

This isn’t a rant, far from it but I’ve been working on this for over a week now and some major questions are sprining to mind with regard to how the IOCs and detection details released may have hindered response efforts. These vulnerabilities were known about since at least December 2020, there were months to get detection intel and scripts/tools ready for people (that’s if you don’t question why did it take so long). So I’ve put some of my thoughts down here on some of the challenges with the IoCs initially released and the detection tools etc. I’ll probably update this later but wanted to publish it before it becomes virtual dust! Read more “Thoughts on IOCs for Exchange Hafnium/ProxyLogon” →

Defense

Field Notes – Just Patch

Windows update stuck at 0% download status

Often is we find an environment missing software updates it’s easy for someone without hands on experience to say, ‘just patch’. Outside of change requests, outside of authorisation, maintenance windows, roll back plans, communications etc. there is also the fact that ‘just patching’ isn’t that simple. Even for fairly standard patching tasks using Windows Updates you sometimes hit a snag. Today I’m looking at exactly that issue on a server, so I thought I’d post the steps to resolve an issue but also, I think this is a nice way to highlight the realities of patching.

We show a GUI and command line (PowerShell) method to achieve this result (the PowerShell isn’t fancy but I figured you could go away and upgrade that if you fancied some fun). Windows update sometimes has issues (does not all software!) and it is sometimes that we need to help it along the way, so let’s get too it! Read more “Field Notes – Just Patch” →