/hacker-roadmap

:pushpin: A guide for amateurs pen testers and a collection of hacking tools, resources and references to practice ethical hacking, pen testing and web security.

MIT LicenseMIT

Hacker roadmap
GitHub issues license

This repository is a guide for amateurs pen testers and a collection of hacking tools, resources and references to practice ethical hacking, pen testing and web security. Most of these tools are UNIX compatible and MIT licensed. Note that Linux is the best operating system to practice ethical hacking.

Summary

Introduction

What is penetration testing ?

Penetration testing is a type of security testing that is used to test the insecurity of an application. It is conducted to find the security risk which might be present in the system.

If a system is not secured, then any attacker can disrupt or take authorized access to that system. Security risk is normally an accidental error that occurs while developing and implementing the software. For example, configuration errors, design errors, and software bugs, etc. Learn more

Want to become a penetration tester ?

Know about risks on the internet and how they can be prevented is very useful. Especially as a developer. Web hacking and penetration testing is the v2.0 of self-defense! But does know about tools and how to use them is really all you need to become a pen tester? Surely not. A real penetration tester must be able to proceed rigorously and detect the weaknesses of an application. He must be able to identify the technology behind and test every single door that might be open to hackers.

This repository aim first to establish a reflection method on penetration testing and explain how to proceed to secure an application. And secondly, to regroup all kind of tools or resources pen testers need. Be sure to know basics of programming languages and Internet security before learning pen testing.

Also, this is important to inform yourself about the law and what you are allowed to do or not. According to your country, the computer laws are not the same. First, check laws about privacy and surveillance : Nine eyes countries, Five eyes and Fourteen Eyes. Always check if what you're doing is legal. Even when it's not offensive, information gathering can also be illegal !

Some vocabulary

Infosec : Information security, which is the practice of preventing unauthorized access, use, disclosure, disruption, modification, inspection, recording or destruction of information. The information or data may take any form, e.g. electronic or physical. An infosec can also be a person who practice ethical security. Wikipedia

Opsec : Operations security, which is a process that identifies critical information to determine if friendly actions can be observed by enemy intelligence, determines if information obtained by adversaries could be interpreted to be useful to them, and then executes selected measures that eliminate or reduce adversary exploitation of friendly critical information. Wikipedia

Black/grey/white hat hacker : Someone who uses bugs or exploits to break into systems or applications. The goal and the method differs depending if he's a black, grey or white hat hacker. A black hat is just someone malicious that does not wait permission to break into a system or application. A white hat is usually a security researcher who practice ethical hacking. A grey hat is just in the middle of these two kind of hackers, he might want to be malicious if it can be benefit (data breach, money, whistleblowing ...).

Red team : According to Wikipedia, a red team or the red team is an independent group that challenges an organization to improve its effectiveness by assuming an adversarial role or point of view. It is particularly effective in organizations with strong cultures and fixed ways of approaching problems. The United States intelligence community (military and civilian) has red teams that explore alternative futures and write articles as if they were foreign world leaders. Little formal doctrine or publications about Red Teaming in the military exist. In infosec exercises, Red teamers are playing the role of attackers. Wikipedia

Blue team : A blue team is a group of individuals who perform an analysis of information systems to ensure security, identify security flaws, verify the effectiveness of each security measure, and to make certain all security measures will continue to be effective after implementation. As a result, blue teams were developed to design defensive measures against red team activities. In infosec exercises, Blue teamers are playing the role of defenders. Wikipedia

Penetration tester : An ethical hacker who practice security, test applications and systems to prevent intrusions or find vulnerabilities.

Security researcher : Someone who practice pen testing and browse the web to find phishing/fake websites, infected servers, bugs or vulnerabilities. He can work for a company as a security consultant, he is most likely a Blue teamer.

Reverse engineering : Reverse engineering, also called back engineering, is the process by which a man-made object is deconstructed to reveal its designs, architecture, or to extract knowledge from the object. Similar to scientific research, the only difference being that scientific research is about a natural phenomenon. Wikipedia

Social engineering : In the context of information security, it refers to psychological manipulation of people into performing actions or divulging confidential information. A type of confidence trick for the purpose of information gathering, fraud, or system access, it differs from a traditional "con" in that it is often one of many steps in a more complex fraud scheme. The term "social engineering" as an act of psychological manipulation of a human, is also associated with the social sciences, but its usage has caught on among computer and information security professionals. Wikipedia

Threat analyst : A threat hunter, also called a cybersecurity threat analyst, is a security professional or managed service provider (MSP) that proactively uses manual or machine-assisted techniques to detect security incidents that may elude the grasp of automated systems. Threat hunters aim to uncover incidents that an enterprise would otherwise not find out about, providing chief information security officers (CISOs) and chief information officers (CIOs) with an additional line of defense against advanced persistent threats (APTs). SearchCIO

Difference between hacking and ethical hacking

A black hat is practicing penetration testing, but unlike a white hat, this is not ethical hacking. Ethical hacking is about find vulnerabilities and improve the security of a system. An ethical hacker is the ultimate security professional. Ethical hackers know how to find and exploit vulnerabilities and weaknesses in various systems, just like a malicious hacker (a black hat hacker). In fact, they both use the same skills; however, an ethical hacker uses those skills in a legitimate, lawful manner to try to find vulnerabilities and fix them before the bad guys can get there and try to break in. An ethical hacker is basically a white hat hacker.

Languages

  • Python
  • Ruby
  • C / C++ / C#
  • Perl
  • PHP
  • Go
  • Java
  • Bash

Content Management Systems

  • Wordpress
  • Joomla
  • Drupal
  • SPIP

Basic steps of pen testing

Tools by category

🕵️‍♂️ Information Gathering

Information Gathering tools allows you to collect host metadata about services and users. Check informations about a domain, IP address, phone number or an email address.

Tool Language Support Description
Th3inspector Perl Linux/Windows/macOS All in one tool for Information Gathering written in Perl.
Crips Python Linux/Windows/macOS IP Tools To quickly get information about IP Address's, Web Pages and DNS records.
theHarvester Python Linux/Windows/macOS E-mails, subdomains and names Harvester.
Scanless Python Linux/Windows/macOS Online port scan scraper.
CTFR Python Linux/Windows/macOS Abusing Certificate Transparency logs for getting HTTPS websites subdomains.
Sn1per bash Linux/macOS Automated Pentest Recon Scanner.
ReconDog Python Linux/Windows/macOS Recon Dog is an all in one tool for all your basic information gathering needs.
RED Hawk PHP Linux/Windows/macOS All in one tool for Information Gathering, Vulnerability Scanning and Crawling. A must have tool for all penetration testers.
Infoga Python Linux/Windows/macOS Email Information Gathering.
KnockMail Python Linux/Windows/macOS Check if email address exists.
Photon Python Linux/Windows/macOS Crawler which is incredibly fast and extracts urls, emails, files, website accounts and much more.
Rapidscan Python Linux/Windows/macOS The Multi-Tool Web Vulnerability Scanner.
a2sv Python Linux/Windows/macOS Auto Scanning to SSL Vulnerability.
Wfuzz Python Linux/Windows/macOS Web application fuzzer.

🔒 Password Attacks

Crack passwords and create wordlists.

Tool Language Support Description
John the Ripper C Linux/Windows/macOS John the Ripper is a fast password cracker.
hashcat C Linux/Windows/macOS World's fastest and most advanced password recovery utility.
Hydra C Linux/Windows/macOS Parallelized login cracker which supports numerous protocols to attack.
ophcrack C++ Linux/Windows/macOS Windows password cracker based on rainbow tables.
Ncrack C Linux/Windows/macOS High-speed network authentication cracking tool.
WGen Python Linux/Windows/macOS Create awesome wordlists with Python.
SSH Auditor Go Linux/macOS The best way to scan for weak ssh passwords on your network.
📝 Wordlists
Tool Description
Probable Worlist Wordlists sorted by probability originally created for password generation and testing.

🌐 Wireless Testing

Used for intrusion detection and wifi attacks.

Tool Language Support Description
Aircrack C Linux/Windows/macOS WiFi security auditing tools suite.
bettercap Go Linux/Windows/macOS/Android bettercap is the Swiss army knife for network attacks and monitoring.
WiFi Pumpkin Python Linux/Windows/macOS/Android Framework for Rogue Wi-Fi Access Point Attack.
Airgeddon Shell Linux/Windows/macOS This is a multi-use bash script for Linux systems to audit wireless networks.
Airbash C Linux/Windows/macOS A POSIX-compliant, fully automated WPA PSK handshake capture script aimed at penetration testing.

🔧 Exploitation Tools

Acesss systems and data with service-oriented exploits.

Tool Language Support Description
SQLmap Python Linux/Windows/macOS Automatic SQL injection and database takeover tool.
XSStrike Python Linux/Windows/macOS Advanced XSS detection and exploitation suite.
Commix Python Linux/Windows/macOS Automated All-in-One OS command injection and exploitation tool.

👥 Sniffing & Spoofing

Listen to network traffic or fake a network entity.

Tool Language Support Description
Wireshark C/C++ Linux/Windows/macOS Wireshark is a network protocol analyzer.
WiFi Pumpkin Python Linux/Windows/macOS/Android Framework for Rogue Wi-Fi Access Point Attack.
Zarp Python Linux/Windows/macOS A free network attack framework.

🚀 Web Hacking

Exploit popular CMSs that are hosted online.

Tool Language Support Description
WPScan Ruby Linux/Windows/macOS WPScan is a black box WordPress vulnerability scanner.
Droopescan Python Linux/Windows/macOS A plugin-based scanner to identify issues with several CMSs, mainly Drupal & Silverstripe.
Joomscan Perl Linux/Windows/macOS Joomla Vulnerability Scanner.
Drupwn Python Linux/Windows/macOS Drupal Security Scanner to perform enumerations on Drupal-based web applications.
Webpwn3r Python Linux/Windows/macOS Web Applications Security Scanner.
CMSeek Python Linux/Windows/macOS CMS Detection and Exploitation suite - Scan WordPress, Joomla, Drupal and 130 other CMSs.

🎉 Post Exploitation

Exploits for after you have already gained access.

Tool Language Support Description
TheFatRat Java Linux/Windows/macOS Easy tool to generate backdoor and easy tool to post exploitation attack like browser attack, dll.
Microsploit Shell Linux/Windows/macOS Fast and easy create backdoor office exploitation using module metasploit packet , Microsoft Office , Open Office , Macro attack , Buffer Overflow.

📦 Frameworks

Frameworks are packs of pen testing tools with custom shell navigation and documentation.

Tool Language Support Description
Operative Framework Python Linux/Windows/macOS Framework based on fingerprint action, this tool is used for get information on a website or a enterprise target with multiple modules.
Metasploit Ruby Linux/Windows/macOS A penetration testing framework for ethical hackers.
fsociety Python Linux/Windows/macOS fsociety Hacking Tools Pack – A Penetration Testing Framework.
cSploit Java Android The most complete and advanced IT security professional toolkit on Android.
radare2 C Linux/Windows/macOS/Android Unix-like reverse engineering framework and commandline tools.
Social Engineer Toolkit Python Linux/macOS Penetration testing framework designed for social engineering.
hate_crack Python Linux/macOS A tool for automating cracking methodologies through Hashcat.
Wifiphisher Python Linux The Rogue Access Point Framework.
Kickthemout Python Linux/macOS Kick devices off your network by performing an ARP Spoof attack.

Additional resources

Books / Manuals

Warning : I haven't read them all so do not consider I am recommanding as I liked them. They just seems to provide useful resources.

Discussions

  • Reddit/HowToHack Learn and ask about hacking, security and pen testing.
  • Reddit/hacking Discuss about hacking and web security.
  • ax0nes Hacking, security, and software development forum.
  • 0Day.rocks on discord Discord server about the 0day.rocks blog for technical and general InfoSec/Cyber discussions & latest news.

Security Advisories

Challenges

License

This repository is under MIT license.