Penetration Testing mailing list archives
Re: Is Pentesting Goal Oriented, or Coverage Oriented?
From: Taras <taras () securityaudit ru>
Date: Tue, 06 Oct 2009 23:37:41 +0400
Hi, Daniel! Thanks for interesting topic :) From my point of view the aim of good pentest is to show practically as much as possible ways to gain goal. For example we can gain access to some critical data, e.g. cardholder data, through the hole in web application. Same access we can gain with help of social engineering and some Trojan-like program. All these ways pentester must show to the customer. On Fri, 2009-10-02 at 21:02 -0400, Daniel Miessler wrote:
Greetings List, I'm having a discussion with Johannes Ullrich via the SANS Application Security Streetfighter Blog on whether penetration testing is goal or coverage oriented. Johannes's position is that a pentest that attains a goal, e.g. root access or a database dump, and then stops is an incomplete and poor pentest. He believes a good pentester should continue finding as many vulnerabilities as he can. I hold the opposite view, which is that a penetration test is, by definition, focused on achieving a specific goal, and that if the aim of testing is to find as many vulnerabilities as possible the type of test you're performing is a vulnerability assessment. Here are the original arguments: Johannes: http://blogs.sans.org/appsecstreetfighter/2009/09/30/pentesting-do-you-need-coverage/ Me: http://blogs.sans.org/appsecstreetfighter/2009/10/03/response-pentesting-coverage/ My Original: http://danielmiessler.com/blog/infosec-vulnerability-assessment-vs-penetration-test I'm curious as to what the list thinks of the two perspectives. -- Daniel R. Miessler W: http://danielmiessler.com E: daniel () danielmiessler com P: 0x4048712D ------------------------------------------------------------------------ This list is sponsored by: Information Assurance Certification Review Board Prove to peers and potential employers without a doubt that you can actually do a proper penetration test. IACRB CPT and CEPT certs require a full practical examination in order to become certified. http://www.iacertification.org ------------------------------------------------------------------------
-- Taras - OSCP, OSWP ---- "Software is like sex: it's better when it's free." - Linus Torvalds
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Current thread:
- Re: Is Pentesting Goal Oriented, or Coverage Oriented?, (continued)
- Re: Is Pentesting Goal Oriented, or Coverage Oriented? Zack Payton (Oct 05)
- Re: Is Pentesting Goal Oriented, or Coverage Oriented? Jerome Athias (Oct 05)
- Re: Is Pentesting Goal Oriented, or Coverage Oriented? Ramki B Ramakrishnan (Oct 05)
- Re: Is Pentesting Goal Oriented, or Coverage Oriented? Chris Griffin (Oct 05)
- Re: Is Pentesting Goal Oriented, or Coverage Oriented? David Howe (Oct 06)
- Re: Is Pentesting Goal Oriented, or Coverage Oriented? Kevin L. Shaw, CISSP, GCIH (Oct 05)
- Re: Is Pentesting Goal Oriented, or Coverage Oriented? Chris Brenton (Oct 05)
- Re: Is Pentesting Goal Oriented, or Coverage Oriented? Marco Ivaldi (Oct 05)
- Re: Is Pentesting Goal Oriented, or Coverage Oriented? Robin Wood (Oct 05)
- Re: Is Pentesting Goal Oriented, or Coverage Oriented? Tim (Oct 05)
- Re: Is Pentesting Goal Oriented, or Coverage Oriented? Taras (Oct 06)