A Pen Test, or a Penetration Test, is a simulated cyberattack on a computer system to test its security. Testing the system’s security is incredibly essential as having a vulnerable system leaves it open to hackers and cyber attacks.
Not to confuse the penetration test with a separate test, which is called the vulnerability assessment.
A penetration test is done by ethical hackers using similar software and techniques that hackers commonly use to gain and maintain access to a targeted system.
Compliance with penetration testing standards ensures that the test accurately measures the security of a system.
The penetration testing standards are well-known and have been established regulatory, and compliance standards include PCI DSS, FISMA, MARS-E, HIPAA,Sarbanes-Oxley, ISO, and many more.
This penetration testing is done so any issues that are found can be addressed without any real attackers gaining access to the system. The Ideology behind using penetration tests is that prevention is far more cost-effective than recovery.
Another very valid reason for pen tests to be run so upper management may better understand their current security position.
What Is a Penetration Test, Steps taken during a penetration test?
The penetration test primarily involves attempting to breach any number of application systems, including front-end/back-end servers and the various APIs that have been implemented.
The National Cyber Security Center describes a Penetration Test as “A Method for gaining assurance in the security of an IT system by attempting to reach some or all of the system’s security, using the same tools and techniques as an adversary might.”
A pen test is required to ensure that your system is secure from hackers that might look for a variety of different vulnerabilities.
A pen test primarily has five phases ranging from: Reconnaissance to Covering Tracks, which hackers regularly follow to gain control of a system while leaving little to no information behind. Attackers primarily use these phrases to gain access and gather data from a targeted system without leaving behind any information that can relate to the attacker.
The first two phases are designed to gain as much information as possible; these two phases focus on gaining both public knowledge and using software / technical tools to gain private information.
Step 1: Reconnaissance
A pen test’s first phase consists of Reconnaissance, where the hackers may browse the target to gain more information. The hackers may also use open source engines to find other data that can potentially be used in a social engineering attack. This first phase is all about gaining general knowledge of the targeted system.
Step 2: Scanning
While the second phase consists of the hacker scanning the system as deeply as possible,this scanning utilizes various technical tools. While these tools’ initial purpose may have been to secure networks, hackers commonly use those tools to break into and gain control of the targeted system.
Step 3 & 4: Gaining Access and Maintaining Access
The third, fourth, and fifth phases focus heavily on gaining access to a targeted system and covering up any tracks. The third phase uses the first and second phases to create a payload that can be sent to the targeted systems. This third phase leads to the fourth phase, which is to maintain access.
Maintaining access requires taking various steps to ensure that the target environment is under the attacker’s control.
During this time, the attackers focus on gathering as much data as possible.The Payload can be created using various techniques, including logging keystrokes,installing adware, stealing credentials, or even altering important data on either the front-end or the back-end server.
Some penetration testing companies maintain large databases of known exploits and provide products that automatically test target systems for vulnerabilities.
Step 5: Covering Tracks
The Gaining access and Maintaining access phases are closely correlated due to using similar techniques while the final phase, Covering Tracks phase, is the phase where the attacker will try to eliminate any sign of the system being compromised to ensure anytype of data gathered, log events don’t reflect who the attacker was to the targeted system.
Government Penetration Test Services
Running a penetration test is important, but making sure that the penetration test is up to theGSA’s standards, or General Services Administrations.
This administration has released various documents focused on relaying various penetration testing techniques and explaining documents for the results of those tests.
The 132-45A Penetration Testing is testing by mimicking real-world attacks to identify methods for circumventing an application’s security features, system, or network.
These standards for 3 testing ensures that the tests are comprehensive enough to securely keep attackers out of anysystem using a variety of different tests.
Preparing for The Penetration Test
The Penetration test requires a larger amount of preparation for more than just the IT department. Any internal IT teams should be on standby, and any upper management who ordered this test should also be on standby to see the test’s final results.
The final group of people which should be made aware of this test, and help monitor it, is Management and authorized technical leaders of the company. This last group of people should be there in case any technical decisions come up during the penetration test.
These groups and departments are made aware of the test, either so they can make technical decisions on the results of the tests or so they can quickly and efficiently create a report about the result of the tests, which may be sent out to various investors or to other departments for a variety of different reasons.
The Internal IT teams should be on standby to ensure that any issues are promptly dealt with, and the internal IT team should also monitor the test as it progresses.
Documentation for the Penetration Test
A Penetration test does require some documentation to be completed; this documentation primarily informs the reader of the parties involved and the scope of the testing that will begin to take place.
Usually split into three main sections, the first section is primarily focused on explaining who the testing company is and some basic background information on how the testing company handles the pen tests. This first section of the
Engagement Letter also focuses on the various tools the testing company will utilize during the pen test.The second section of the engagement letter is called the Scope Statement; this section of the engagement letter focuses heavily on the scope of this test.
This section also defines the general parameters of the testing; this allows anyone looking to get a general idea of what the testing will entail.
This section will also explain which systems will be tested and which ones will not be tested in a large amount of detail. The final section for the Engagement Letter is called the Rules of Engagement; this section focuses heavily on legal matters and how the information will be transferred to the company from the testing company.
These three sections are incredibly important and must be clearly defined, as it explains to anyone reading the document what took place and which systems were tested, and how thoroughly the systems were tested.
Preemptive Work For the Penetration Test
Preparing for the pen test is incredibly important as the test will be extensive and will take a large amount of time. Some of the IT and company preparations should ensure that the penetration test goeswell, including having a variety of technical contacts available before, during, and even after the penetration testing has been completed.
Anyone looking to start a penetration test should notify the internal IT teams as if the test begins; without the IT team being made aware, then the IT team may become alarmed and may start to reach out to management due to a potential hack taking place and being able to have clear communication before the penetration test is incredibly important.
Not only should any IT teams be made aware that the test will take place, but having them ready to react to the test results is incredibly important.
This is because of the time commitment that a company must undertake after the penetration test, as the internal ITteams will need to research and begin to slowly resolve the vulnerabilities that the company and the IT teams are made aware of.
The IT team will need to allocate a significant amount of time to ensure that they are able to review and create fixes for these issues efficiently.
Prioritizing the recommendations with an eye to the threat level, procedures, and resources may take time, but the net result is improved security and heightened security awareness. The internal IT team may want to look at any missing patches or check through a variety of different old and forgotten systems.
Potential hackers could use these, and the penetration testing company will explore this.
The IT team will also need to explore a few other items before the penetration testing begins, some of these include testing various passwords for its strength, restrict admin interfaces which means accessing control lists should be in place for web GUIs and various other platforms and Validateinput/output features the most common web application security weakness is the failure to validate input for the client or environment properly.
Another preparation step that the company will need to do is to ensure that the system’s environment is as ideal as possible. The environment will need to allow the full testers permission to test; this can be the fact that the CIRT team may need to alert law enforcement and ISP to ensure that the authorities don’t mistake the pen test as an actual hacking attempt.
This is contacting and giving the authorities notice so that a streamlined incident response plan can be put into place. The company will need to ensure that the penetration test isn’t under scoped; this means that the penetration test isn’t able to access all the required systems and instead focuses on a specific system. An underscored pen test can be misleading as the smaller scope takes considerably less time due to the lower amount of content that needs to be thoroughly checked and scanned through.
Underscored pen tests are usually created through concern for the availability or reliability of production systems. While penetration testing shouldn’t create an availability issue in terms of production, as the testing primarily focuses on the back-end and less on the front-end of the server.
Although many penetration testing companies do state that there may be glitches on the network or the application side, which could lead to a significant issue with the application or the network.
You’ll want people available and empowered to collaborate with testers in the event of any negative impacts so the issue can be addressed and remediated as soon as possible.
What will the IT Team need from Other Departments for the Penetration test?
The internal IT department will need to have a larger amount of time after the penetration testing.
The internal IT department will need time without any new feature requests as the tests will undoubtedly show some type of technical issue that they will need to quickly correct before looking to add any new features to the system.
The IT department will require the upper management to be available after the penetration test is completed, as they will need to review the results of the test and decide on any fixes that need to be prioritized and which changes will be a lower priority as it seemingly won’t be a significant way for an attacker to gain access into the system.
Penetrations Testing Standards
Various testing standards range from OSSTMM, OWASP, NIST, PTES, and ISSAF, which focus on testing different frameworks and systems.
The OSSTMM, or Open Source Security Testing Methodology Manual, is updated every six months and focuses heavily on looking for vulnerabilities.
This testing method also has the most support across the five different penetration tests.Another testing standard called Open Web Application Security Project, or OWASP, this standard is primarily focused on web and mobile applications.
The OWASP also focuses on logical flaws arising in unsafe development practices.
The OWASP manual explains a total of 66 controls to identify and assess vulnerabilities with numerous functionalities found in the latest applications today.
Another PTES testing standard recommends a structured approach to a penetration test; thistesting compliance guides you through the various phases of a penetration test. PETS also provides guidelines to the tester for post-exploitation testing, and if required, they can validate the successful fixing of previously identified vulnerabilities.
These testing standards primarily focus on different applications or software; these testing standards also utilize different methodologies. A penetration test focuses on a specific system or a specific web application and is primarily run by a penetration testing company specializing in a few various forms of penetration testing.
Coordinating with The Penetration Tester
Coordinating between the company’s IT team and the penetration testing company is incredibly important as if the company’s IT team is not aware that a penetration test is commencing, the internal IT team will react as if the Penetration test is an actual hacker attempting to gain access into the company’s system.
Conclusion
A Penetration test is a simulated cyber attack to ensure that the system is able to fend off an actual cyber attack. Penetration testing is completed by Ethical hackers using similar softwares and techniques to actual hackers. The ideology for this type of testing is that preventative measures are much more cost effective than having to recover after a cyberattack.
