Review by Michael R. Heinzl 

Thanks to The Ethical Hacker Network (EH-Net) I received the November 2010 Giveaway of a free seat in InfoSec Institute’s Ethical Hacking Course. I had read and heard positive feedback about InfoSec Institute and their courses, so I was already interested to see if their reputation holds up. The course teaches the fundamentals of penetration testing and prepares students for both EC-Council’s Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH) and IACRB’s Certified Penetration Tester (CPT) certifications. Besides their basic ethical hacking course, InfoSec Institute also offers two more courses focused on penetration testing, targeting a more experienced audience, as well as two courses towards reverse code engineering (all with regards to their pentesting track).

InfoSec Institute describes their Ethical Hacking Course as follow: “Our most popular information security and hacking training goes in-depth into the techniques used by malicious, black hat hackers with attention getting lectures and hands-on lab exercises. While these hacking skills can be used for malicious purposes, this class teaches you how to use the same hacking techniques to perform a white-hat, ethical hack, on your organization. You leave with the ability to quantitatively assess and measure threats to information assets; and discover where your organization is most vulnerable to hacking in this network security training course.”

If you are in the same situation as me, and wouldn’t be able to sit for the live training in person, InfoSec Institute offer some of their courses in an online format, which is basically a recorded class from the live version, split into a couple of modules.

So let’s take a closer look at the online version of InfoSec Institute’s Ethical Hacking Course and IACRB’s Certified Penetration Tester certification.

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We Have a Winner!!

OK... so you've seen the great videos by Ryan Linn, the webcast by James "Egyp7" Lee and the numerous forum discussions. April was the time for someone to get their very own copy of Metasploit Express that includes the full license & support for 1 year. And for your viewing pleasure, be sure to check our Metasploit's newly redesigned website. For those not in the know or unfamiliar with the Express Edition:

Metasploit Express builds on the power of the Metasploit Framework, the gold standard for penetration testing with more than one million unique downloads in the past year and the largest public database of quality assured exploits. Unlike the Metasploit Framework, which offers only a command-line interface, Metasploit Express provides an easy-to-use graphical user interface that guides the user through the steps of discovery, gaining access, taking control, and collecting evidence. In addition to the features available in the Metasploit Framework, Metasploit Express automates many common penetration testing tasks and provides the ability to launch advanced attacks without the need to develop custom scripts. Individuals whose role does not permit them to conduct penetration tests can still verify exploitability with a dry run that only shows the exploit information but does not execute the exploits.

All someone had to do was participate on EH-Net. And that deserving EH-Net member this time around is Jamie.R. Congrats and keep up the good work. Even if you didn't win this month, keep it up. Not only will there be more prizes each and every month, but also your participation is helping many people in the global security community. For that, all EH-Netters deserve a huge thanks.

del.icio.us Discuss in Forums (5) Participation is the ONLY way to win. Start a thread that sparks lots of interest; share thoughts and experiences; help a newbie... quality is more important than quantity. Only members are eligible! Registration Is FREE!

Column by Mike Murray

I was recently at a conference with a friend of mine who was visiting Vegas for a hypnosis conference, and I was explaining to him the biggest problem with most social engineering "experts."  And, of course, because I had been talking to him about amnesia, I promptly forgot about it.

I was reminded of it when I was reading something that another social engineering expert wrote that linked hypnotic phenomena to the act of social engineering.  So, I'll share the same caveat with all of you: if someone tells you that hypnosis has anything to do with social engineering, they're a charlatan and you need to be VERY careful believing anything that they're saying.

This is said, of course, as someone who is formally trained in hypnosis and has spent a lot of years studying it as part of my training to become good at social engineering.  But, in the same way that being a great coder doesn't make you a great penetration tester (and vice versa), being a great hypnotist doesn't make you a great social engineer (and vice versa).

Let me explain. 

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Review by RichM

Kevin Poulsen has worked tirelessly to become a respected expert in the information security field and is a senior editor for Wired Magazine. Kevin edits the Threat Level Blog covering various topics mostly intersecting between law enforcement and hacking, but there are other relevant posts like the latest goings on with Wikileaks. The now white hat was not always on the straight and narrow and made a name for himself as his alter ego, “Dark Dante.”

The legend of his “exploits” is well known and has him counted amongst America's most infamous hackers. Dark Dante's most impressive hack was when he used his phreaking skills to win a Porsche 944. He rigged the phone lines of an LA radio station, guaranteeing he would be their 102nd caller! Kevin Poulsen and Max Butler, the person on whom the book is based, have many similarities. Both are very skilled and have a natural ability, but while one was able to find legitimate work after a conviction, the other was not. It is because of Kevin's past that he can bring to life such a fascinating topic. Most mainstream reporters would (at best) turn this story into a 5-page magazine article, whereas Mr. Poulsen has created a suspenseful page-turner in Kingpin: How One Hacker Took Over the Billion-Dollar Cybercrime Underground.

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By Chris Gates, CISSP, GCIH, C|EH, CPTS

Oracle applications are not what you’d call simple.  I think any DBA or Oracle Application Server Administrator will be the first to attest to that fact.  Oracle, with its great products, comes with some un-pleasantries.  These are:

1. Oracle applications are complicated (hopefully we all agree on this).
2. They come with loads of default content and no clear way to remove that content.  There is no IISLockdown equivalent for Oracle applications.  Content you don’t want must be removed manually.  Some of this content can be used to run database queries, read documents, gather information via information leakage on the pages or perform XSS attacks.
3. Users have to pay for patches and extended advisory information (even then, no Proof of Concept code is released by Oracle).
4. And lastly, you have a fairly complicated patch/upgrade process which leads to an "it’s working, don’t touch it" mentality by a fair amount of admins.

This provides a target rich environment for pentesters and bad guys. Let’s take a look.

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The entire hour and a half video of the webcast
and complete slide deck are now available.

On March 22 last month, EH-Net presented a webcast with James "egyp7" Lee who took the participants on a technical deep-dive through the new features of the free and open source Metasploit Framework version 3.6, focusing on techniques valuable to professional penetration testers in red teams and consulting firms.  This included post exploitation modules (a more powerful replacement for Meterpreter scripts) and using platform-agnostic payloads for increased pwnage.  Before the lengthy Q&A, he also covered some of the feature highlights in the commercial editions, Metasploit Pro and Metasploit Express. Webcast participants and now viewers of this video should be familiar with the concepts of Metasploit and penetration testing.

James "egyp7" Lee has been contributing to the open source Metasploit Framework as a core developer and project manager since April 2008. Before joining Rapid7 to work on Metasploit in a full-time position, he discovered numerous vulnerabilities in SCADA and Industrial Control Systems at Idaho National Laboratory. James has presented at DEF CON, Black Hat USA, Black Hat DC, SANS Process Control & SCADA Security Summit, and other events.

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We Have a Winner!!

Live, online courses by top instructors without the need for travel expenses... That's SANS vLive! Be sure to take advantage of this SPECIAL OFFER! Attend Josh Wright's Wireless Course, SEC617, use Coupon Code 'WISPY_EH' and get a FREE Wi-Spy DBx portable spectrum analyzer from Metageek (retail value $599). Students will also receive a coupon code to upgrade Wi-Spy from Chanalyzer 4 to Chanalyzer Pro for only $200 instead of $400, an additional $200 savings. This offer will be good until class starts on April 19th. Students outside of the US will be responsible for paying any duties, customs or import fees imposed by their country of residence. And now the drum roll... SephStorm is our deserving winner this month and gets a free seat worth $3500 in either:

- Security 617: Wireless Ethical Hacking, Penetration Testing, and Defenses Tuesday, April 19, 2011 - Thursday, May 26, 2011
- Security 542: Web App Penetration Testing and Ethical Hacking Monday, May 16, 2011 - Monday, June 27, 2011
- Security 504: Hacker Techniques, Exploits & Incident Handling Monday, June 13, 2011 - Wednesday, July 27, 2011

Editor's Note: This is the last time Josh will be teaching this course in any format until July. So if you were thinking of doing this class with the courseware author, this is your shot. And you can do it in the comfort of your own home or office in your pajamas. OF course I'd suggest the former location rather than the latter, but I guess that all depends on where you work. Either way, congrats to SephStorm and all the future winners of EH-Net's Monthly Giveaways.

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Course Review by Wardell Motley

I recently had the opportunity to travel to Colorado Springs, Co. and took the Information Security Assessment Methodology (ISAM) course by Security Horizon. The ISAM, which was formerly the NSA-IAM\IEM, course has now been merged into a combined 3-day, 24-hour course.

The ISAM was created by examining the processes and techniques implemented within the information security community by seasoned assessors from both industry and government sectors. The purpose of the ISAM is to provide a detailed systematic standard for the community to perform an information security assessment by thoroughly examining cyber vulnerabilities. Unlike other courses, the ISAM concentrates heavily on the actual methods and processes of an assessment and is not a tool-based or theory-heavy course.

Although no class can teach the fundamentals or give the experience of being able to communicate effectively with the target audience, the ISAM provides a roadmap on how to deal with flaky answers from executives and scared employees that fear their answers may end up putting them out of a job.

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