Assessing Network Security

Chapter 12. Obtaining Information from a Host

Conducting a penetration test is like conducting any other type of attack—the more you know about what you’re attacking, the more likely you are to be successful. In Chapter 9, and Chapter 10, you learned how to gain information about the network. In Chapter 11, you learned about how to find which ports are active. In this chapter, you’ll put all these skills together to take the next step: finding information from a particular host.

This chapter provides examples of tools in use rather than details about specific tools. The tools that are available change quickly; some are likely to be obsolete and others to have been updated by the time you read this book. Also, each operating system has different ...