Penetration Testing mailing list archives
Re: Email Pen-testing
From: Andreas <andreas () inferno nadir org>
Date: Sun, 21 Mar 2004 21:38:18 +0100
On Mar 20, Blake wrote:
Wanted to get your opinion on something... Doing a pen-test for a small bank which was proving very difficult to get it. A friend of mine suggested I send a backdoor trojan attachment via an email. If they clicked on it, the backdoor performs maybe a boxscan, grab passwords, and connects out to the Internet. --Much like a virus.
Let me first say, that i am not a professional pen-tester, but i am very interested in this field. In my opinion, social engineering is part of a pentest. You can harden your network as much as possible, but if you don't train your employees to never open (unknown) attachments, tell passwords over the phone line etc. all your hardening isn't it worth. Also, it is often the easiest way, to brake into the companies network, because initial traffic to the internet is always allowed, while most ports from the outside are blocked. If the internal net isn't hardened very much, you can own the hole network of the company by getting one user executing your binary.
I think this type of testing is becoming more relevant nowadays, especially with whats out there. It reinforces properly configured antivirus software and user awareness.
The fact, that email worms are often making its way inside a company proofs, that this attack vector is not trivial. Each of this worm mails could be your malicious binary.
I spoke with a previous customer of mine about the idea. He said he would be very upset if he was not told prior to that type of test as part of normal pen-testing.
Might be true. Tell him about your plans and ask him, not to inform his employees.
Generally speaking, my code of ethics doesn't allow me to social engineer. I don't like lying and misleading people. Also people tend to hate you after they've been punk'd.
But perhaps they learned their lesson?!
-Blake
regards, Andreas --------------------------------------------------------------------------- You're a pen tester, but is google.com still your R&D team? Now you can get trustworthy commercial-grade exploits and the latest techniques from a world-class research group. www.coresecurity.com/promos/sf_ept1 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Current thread:
- RE: Email Pen-testing, (continued)
- RE: Email Pen-testing AJ Butcher, Information Systems and Computing (Mar 23)
- RE: Email Pen-testing Frank Knobbe (Mar 24)
- Re: Email Pen-testing Michael Richardson (Mar 24)
- RE: Email Pen-testing Rob Shein (Mar 23)
- RE: Email Pen-testing Brad . Murray (Mar 23)
- Re: Email Pen-testing Michael Richardson (Mar 23)
- RE: Email Pen-testing R. DuFresne (Mar 23)
- Re: Email Pen-testing Rainer Duffner (Mar 23)