Kali Linux Cheat Sheet for Penetration Testers

Penetration testing (also called pen testing) is the practice of testing a computer system, network or Web application to find vulnerabilities that an attacker could exploit.

Kali Linux Cheat Sheet for Penetration testers is a high level overview for typical penetration testing environment ranging from nmap, sqlmap, ipv4, enumeration, fingerprinting etc. Always view man pages if you are in doubt or the commands are not working as outlined here (can be OS based, version based  changes etc.) for the operating system you are using (such as BlackBox, Black Ubuntu, ParrotSec OS, Debian, Ubuntu etc.). I’ve also referenced some guides that I found useful in different sections and it might come in handy.

Recon and Enumeration

NMAP Commands

Nmap (“Network Mapper”) is a free and open source utility for network discovery and security auditing. Many systems and network administrators also find it useful for tasks such as network inventory, managing service upgrade schedules, and monitoring host or service uptime. Nmap uses raw IP packets in novel ways to determine what hosts are available on the network, what services (application name and version) those hosts are offering, what operating systems (and OS versions) they are running, what type of packet filters/firewalls are in use, and dozens of other characteristics. It was designed to rapidly scan large networks, but works fine against single hosts. Nmap runs on all major computer operating systems, and official binary packages are available for Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X.

Router hack using nmap here.

SMB enumeration

In computer networking, Server Message Block (SMB), one version of which was also known as Common Internet File System (CIFS, /ˈsɪfs/), operates as an application-layer network protocol mainly used for providing shared access to files, printers, and serial ports and miscellaneous communications between nodes on a network

Other Host Discovery

Other methods of host discovery, that don’t use nmap…

SMB Enumeration

Enumerate Windows shares / Samba shares.

Python Local Web Server

Python local web server command, handy for serving up shells and exploits on an attacking machine.

Mounting File Shares

How to mount NFS / CIFS, Windows and Linux file shares.

Basic FingerPrinting

A device fingerprint or machine fingerprint or browser fingerprint is information collected about a remote computing device for the purpose of identification. Fingerprints can be used to fully or partially identify individual users or devices even when cookies are turned off.

SNMP Enumeration

SNMP enumeration is the process of using SNMP to enumerate user accounts on a target system. SNMP employs two major types of software components for communication: the SNMP agent, which is located on the networking device, and the SNMP management station, which communicates with the agent.

DNS Zone Transfers

DNSRecon

DNSRecon provides the ability to perform:

1. Check all NS Records for Zone Transfers
2. Enumerate General DNS Records for a given Domain (MX, SOA, NS, A, AAAA, SPF and TXT)
3. Perform common SRV Record Enumeration. Top Level Domain (TLD) Expansion
4. Check for Wildcard Resolution
5. Brute Force subdomain and host A and AAAA records given a domain and a wordlist
6. Perform a PTR Record lookup for a given IP Range or CIDR
7. Check a DNS Server Cached records for A, AAAA and CNAME Records provided a list of host records in a text file to check
8. Enumerate Common mDNS records in the Local Network Enumerate Hosts and Subdomains using Google

 DNS Enumeration Kali - DNSReconroot:~#
 dnsrecon -d TARGET -D /usr/share/wordlists/dnsmap.txt -t std --xml ouput.xml

HTTP / HTTPS Webserver Enumeration

Packet Inspection

Username Enumeration

Some techniques used to remotely enumerate users on a target system.

SMB User Enumeration

SNMP User Enumeration

Passwords

Wordlists

Massive wordlist here at g0tm1lk’s blog

Brute Forcing Services

Hydra FTP Brute Force

Hydra is a parallelized login cracker which supports numerous protocols to attack. It is very fast and flexible, and new modules are easy to add. This tool makes it possible for researchers and security consultants to show how easy it would be to gain unauthorized access to a system remotely. On Ubuntu it can be installed from the synaptic package manager. On Kali Linux, it is per-installed.

Hydra POP3 Brute Force

Hydra SMTP Brute Force

Use -t to limit concurrent connections, example: -t 15

Cracking password using Hydra guide here

Password Cracking

John The Ripper – JTR

John the Ripper is different from tools like Hydra. Hydra does blind brute-forcing by trying username/password combinations on a service daemon like ftp server or telnet server. John however needs the hash first. So the greater challenge for a hacker is to first get the hash that is to be cracked. Now a days hashes are more easily crackable using free rainbow tables available online. Just go to one of the sites, submit the hash and if the hash is made of a common word, then the site would show the word almost instantly. Rainbow tables basically store common words and their hashes in a large database. Larger the database, more the words covered.

Cracking password using John the Ripper guide here

Exploit Research

Ways to find exploits for enumerated hosts / services.

Full on guide with screenshots for searching exploits here

Compiling Exploits

Identifying if C code is for Windows or Linux

C #includes will indicate which OS should be used to build the exploit.

Build Exploit GCC

Compile exploit gcc.

GCC Compile 32Bit Exploit on 64Bit Kali

Handy for cross compiling 32 bit binaries on 64 bit attacking machines.

Compile Windows .exe on Linux

Build / compile windows exploits on Linux, resulting in a .exe file.

SUID Binary

Often SUID C binary files are required to spawn a shell as a superuser, you can update the UID / GID and shell as required.

below are some quick copy and pate examples for various shells:

SUID C Shell for /bin/bash

int main(void){
       setresuid(0, 0, 0);
       system("/bin/bash");
}

SUID C Shell for /bin/sh

int main(void){
       setresuid(0, 0, 0);
       system("/bin/sh");
}

Building the SUID Shell binary

gcc -o suid suid.c

For 32 bit:

gcc -m32 -o suid suid.c

TTY Shells

Tips / Tricks to spawn a TTY shell from a limited shell in Linux, useful for running commands like su from reverse shells.

Python TTY Shell Trick

python -c 'import pty;pty.spawn("/bin/bash")'

echo os.system('/bin/bash')

Spawn Interactive sh shell

/bin/sh -i

Spawn Perl TTY Shell

exec "/bin/sh";
perl —e 'exec "/bin/sh";'

Spawn Ruby TTY Shell

exec "/bin/sh"

Spawn Lua TTY Shell

os.execute('/bin/sh')

Spawn TTY Shell from Vi

Run shell commands from vi:

:!bash

Spawn TTY Shell NMAP

!sh

Metasploit

Metasploit was created by H. D. Moore in 2003 as a portable network tool using Perl. By 2007, the Metasploit Framework had been completely rewritten in Ruby. On October 21, 2009, the Metasploit Project announced that it had been acquired by Rapid7, a security company that provides unified vulnerability management solutions.

Like comparable commercial products such as Immunity’s Canvas or Core Security Technologies’ Core Impact, Metasploit can be used to test the vulnerability of computer systems or to break into remote systems. Like many information security tools, Metasploit can be used for both legitimate and unauthorized activities. Since the acquisition of the Metasploit Framework, Rapid7 has added two open core proprietary editions called Metasploit Express and Metasploit Pro.

Metasploit’s emerging position as the de facto exploit development framework led to the release of software vulnerability advisories often accompanied by a third party Metasploit exploit module that highlights the exploitability, risk and remediation of that particular bug. Metasploit 3.0 began to include fuzzing tools, used to discover software vulnerabilities, rather than just exploits for known bugs. This avenue can be seen with the integration of the lorcon wireless (802.11) toolset into Metasploit 3.0 in November 2006. Metasploit 4.0 was released in August 2011.

Meterpreter Payloads

Windows reverse meterpreter payload

Windows VNC Meterpreter payload

Linux Reverse Meterpreter payload

Meterpreter Cheat Sheet

Useful meterpreter commands.

Common Metasploit Modules

Remote Windows Metasploit Modules (exploits)

Local Windows Metasploit Modules (exploits)

Auxilary Metasploit Modules

Metasploit Powershell Modules

Post Exploit Windows Metasploit Modules

Networking

TTL Fingerprinting

IPv4

Classful IP Ranges

E.g Class A,B,C (depreciated)

IPv4 Private Address Ranges

IPv4 Subnet Cheat Sheet

ASCII Table Cheat Sheet

Useful for Web Application Penetration Testing, or if you get stranded on Mars and need to communicate with NASA.

CISCO IOS Commands

A collection of useful Cisco IOS commands.

Cryptography

Hash Lengths

Hash Examples

Likely just use hash-identifier for this but here are some example hashes:

Identify HASH and cracking password using Wireshark guide here

SQLMap Examples

sqlmap is an open source penetration testing tool that automates the process of detecting and exploiting SQL injection flaws and taking over of database servers. It comes with a powerful detection engine, many niche features for the ultimate penetration tester and a broad range of switches lasting from database fingerprinting, over data fetching from the database, to accessing the underlying file system and executing commands on the operating system via out-of-band connections.

Source:

This article originally appeared on Penetration Testing Tools Cheat Sheet.