CREST Certified Penetration Testing

External Penetration Test

An external penetration test emulates an attacker trying to break into your network from the outside. The goal of the engineer performing this assessment is to breach the perimeter and prove they have internal network access. This test includes:

• Open source reconnaissance against the organization
• Full port scan covering all TCP ports and the top 1,000 UDP ports of the targets in scope
• Full vulnerability scan of the targets
• Manual and automated exploit attempts
• Password attacks

Internal Penetration Test

An internal penetration test emulates an attacker on the inside of your network. This could be either an attacker who is successful in breaching the perimeter through another method or a malicious insider. The goal of the engineer in this module is to gain root and/or domain administrator level access on the network, and gain access to sensitive files. Activities include:

• Active and Passive network reconnaissance including traffic sniffing, port scanning, LDAP enumeration, SMB enumeration, etc.
• Vulnerability scan on all in-scope targets
• Spoofing attacks such as ARP cache poisoning, LLMNR/NBNS spoofing, etc.
• Manual and automated exploit attempts
• Shared resource enumeration
• Password attacks
• Pivoting attacks

Wireless Penetration Test

A wireless penetration test is a comprehensive evaluation of the wireless networks in your organization using automated and manual methods. Areas covered include:

• Password attacks
• WEP/WPA cracking
• Guest wireless segmentation checks
• Traffic sniffing attacks
• SSID spoofing
• Rogue access point discovery

Social Engineering Assessment

This assessment is designed to target and take advantage of the human-element to gain access to your network. This is done using a variety of methods to get an employee to click on something they shouldn’t, enter their credentials or otherwise provide them when they shouldn’t, or divulge information that may assist an attacker in breaching your network. The goal for the engineer performing this assessment is to gain information that may assist an attacker in future attacks, gather credentials, or gain a foothold on the internal network. This assessment will include:

• Phone-based attacks
• Spear phishing attacks
• Bulk phishing attacks

Physical Penetration Test

A physical penetration test is an assessment of the physical security of your premises. Our engineers will attempt to gain access to your facility by identifying weaknesses and/or using social engineering. Once inside, our engineers will attempt to gather sensitive information, gain access to sensitive areas such as the data center, and attempt to gain internal network access.

Vulnerability Scanning

Vulnerability scanning is a regular, automated process that identifies the potential points of compromise on a network. A vulnerability scan detects and classifies system weaknesses in computers, networks and communications equipment and predicts the effectiveness of countermeasures. Our engineers will conduct this scan for you and use our expertise to remove false positives and produce a risk-prioritized report.

API Penetration Test

An API penetration test emulates an attacker trying to exploit vulnerabilities within your API that may allow him to bypass authentication controls, access sensitive data, or otherwise disrupt the service. The goal of the engineer performing this assessment is to comprehensively review your API for OWASP Top 10 vulnerabilities and exploit any vulnerability that may allow the engineer to bypass security controls. Our API Penetration Testing includes:

• Method and parameter fuzzing
• Injection attacks, such as SQLi, XSS, XPath, Command
• Authentication bypass and privilege escalation attempts
• Authorization testing to assess the security of data in multi-tenant configurations including:
  • Direct object references
  • Client or user impersonation
  • Authorization bypass
  • Information Leakage between clients
• Analyzing headers and error messages for information disclosure
• Identification of unnecessary information returned or data leakage
• Analysis of server-level transport encryption for security best practice