Devices - Penetration Testing Like a Hacker. - SecNiche Security Labs

POINT OF VIEWIsn’t Social Engineeringthe Safest Form of PenTesting?If it’s permitted, registered and certified, it’s pentesting, and if it’snot, it’s just plain words scary hacking.One might argue over this, but for a student anda budding pentester like me, this is the truthand holds water. Social engineering won’t callyour work illegal unless you harm someone personallyor cause some financial loss. Plus, since you don’t havecertifications at competitive prices, no one even wantsyou to be a certified Social Engineer at that unaffordableprice.As a learner I don’t think any of the two shouldbe your main concerns. Just knowing the passwordand some browsing using it should be enough for anencouragement. I can get someone drunk and get hispasswords rather than doing phishing and other stuff.Getting picked up by girls from a bar and then usingtheir laptop or desktop with an excuse to check mymails is what I have been doing lately. The fun part is todiscover the lover’s files and saved passwords… Okay,maybe I am not being picked up by girls in the bar, butthey do give me their laptops to use the Internet (not inthe bar of course, well the bar was supposed to soundcool). Anyways, other moves are: offering my laptop toothers to change passwords or login into any account.Some smart ones check the anti-virus inclusion list totrack keyloggers, some trust me, others have not heardabout firefox addons, or the changed script that enablesstoring all passwords without offering to remember.Trojans haven’t helped me much, nor has any exploitfrom Metasploit that I know of (some 3 or 4), exceptfor my own virtual machine which has no anti-virus.Accessing other PCs myself than accessing it remotelyhas so far worked pretty good for me. I’m often filledwith guilt that I make friends just to add them to mystolen passwords list… But that’s a different story, let’snot get there. Watching desktop screens of your friendsat night and clicking their picture remotely at that verymoment aren’t on the list of the most interesting things,but one still might enjoy doing it for fun and, of course,learning. But try not to go for the easy way, which isimplanting the .pdf in your friend’s laptop, who uses anolder version of Adobe Reader. Removing my devicefrom my friend’s Facebook was the coolest correctionthat I’ve done so far (oh, try Konqueror, it impressedme). Getting the phone number to stay in touch is easy,then updating Facebook status from that number is somuch fun, thanks to the websites the names of whichcan’t be disclosed here.Moving on, the only method I’ve found to protect myown Facebook wall from sms spoofing is by not sharingmy phone number with anyone. Sms spoofing is so easy,simple and free a non-geek can do it. Against caller idspoofing, those who can crack astrisk aren’t idle enoughto try me, so I feel pretty much safe. I am not so sure ifFacebook knows they have this vulnerability, since it’sstill on the go. I really hope they buy this issue.Upon being caught when the secret was somehowrevealed to people, saying that I was pentesting your05/2011 (5) SeptemberPage 4 http://pentestmag.com