Ethical Hacking and Penetration Testing Guide

Chapter 9Postexploitation

So we have successfully exploited the target and managed to gain access to it. Now we are into the postexploitation phase, which is the last phase of our penetration testing process. In this phase, we will learn to exploit our targets further, escalating privileges and penetrating the internal network even more. Meterpreter, which is the heart of this chapter, makes the postexploitation process much easier.

Meterpreter contains many built-in scripts written in ruby; we can also add and modify meter-preter scripts based on our requirements or just for exploration.

The goals of this chapter are as follows:

• Gaining situation awareness in Windows/Linux after target compromise
• Using Meterpreter scripts to perform reconnaissance ...