Chapter 1, Introducing Penetration Testing, provides an introduction to what pen testing is and explains how a component of professional security testing and it is the validation of vulnerabilities. By understanding penetration testing, we can prepare for providing professional security testing services to our clients.

Chapter 2, Choosing the Virtual Environment, explores the different types of virtualization technologies and introduces a number of different options. We then compare and contrast and select our software for our range.

Chapter 3, Planning a Range, takes you through the process of what is required to plan a test environment. Professional testing is all about planning and practicing against different vulnerabilities. We review the planning techniques of the professional security tester.

Chapter 4, Identifying Range Architectures, defines the composition of a range and creating a network structure. This structure allows you great flexibility when it comes to connecting components and expanding the range to emulate complex architectures.

Chapter 5, Identifying a Methodology, explores a sample group of a number of testing methodologies. Information will be provided so that you can make a comparison, adapt a methodology, and customize it to your engagement requirements.

Chapter 6, Creating an External Attack Architecture, builds a layered architecture and follows a systematic process and methodology for conducting an external test. Additionally, you will deploy protection measures and carry out testing to see how effective the protection measures are by using the methods of an attacker to evade and bypass protection measures.

Chapter 7, Assessment of Devices, presents challenges against testing devices. This chapter includes techniques for testing weak filtering as well as methods of penetrating various defenses that might be encountered when testing.

Chapter 8, Architecting an IDS/IPS Range, investigates deployment of the Snort IDS and a number of host-based security protections. Once deployed, a number of evasion techniques are explored for evading the threshold settings of the IDS.

Chapter 9, Assessment of Web Servers and Web Applications, provides us with information on one of the most popular attack vectors, one that is accessible in virtually any environment. Almost all organizations require some form of online presence. Therefore, it is a good bet that we will have a web server and probably some web applications that we can use to attempt to compromise a client system and/or network.

Chapter 10, Testing Flat and Internal Networks, provides us with details on how, when we perform internal or white-box testing, we do not face the same challenges that we face when trying to conduct an external or black-box test. This does not mean we do not face challenges when the network is flat and we are inside it—they are just different from the other testing methods.

Chapter 11, Testing Servers, provides us with information about the ways in which we can target and, hopefully, penetrate the servers that we encounter when testing. As the target is a server, we could potentially obtain access via an OS vulnerability or a flaw in an application that is running.

Chapter 12, Exploring Client-Side Attack Vectors, provides us with information about the ways in which we can target clients. We will explore different methods of attacking a client. We will also explore how social engineering is a major attack vector.

Chapter 13, Building a Complete Cyber Range, provides us with a complete architecture that we can use to perform our testing. This design will allow us to plug in any required components that we might have. Furthermore, it will provide us with the capability to test using any type of testing methodology.