How To Conduct A Network Penetration Test? Example and Tips

Penetration Testing is usually an ethical hacking procedure involving checking out an app or enterprise’s infrastructure for danger.

The Network Penetration Test procedure assists in tackling the different dangers in the system and removes the root cause behind these dangers, including the misconfigurations, the badly designed architecture, weak code, and all.

What are the biggest advantages of Pen Testing?

  • It helps recognize the dangers that would otherwise go unnoticed.
  • It makes it easy to find out the actual dangers in the system and the web apps.
  • It aids in testing the productivity of web app firewalls.
  • It helps in testing the cyber defence capacity of the company.
  • It makes it easy to identify and portray the actual time risks and dangers.
  • Helps with the process of discovering and showing real dangers and possible mishaps.
  • Makes it easy to discover various insecurities existing in the system infrastructure network or app.

What are the various kinds of Pen Testing?

Network Penetration Testing:

This pen-testing demands the physical structure of the system to be checked for risks present in the company network.

The penetration tester has to perform tests in the company’s network and wishes to discover the loopholes present in the design, functioning, and implementation of the organization’s network.

Different parts of the company, like computers, modems, and remote devices, are thoroughly looked at by the tester to remove the possible dangers.

Physical Pen Testing:

This penetration testing technique imitates the appearance or character of actual threats. The pen tester behaves like a cyber-attacker and attempts to break the physical restraints of safety. This testing is performed to check for the dangers present in physical controls like security cameras, sensors, barriers, lockers, etc.

Web-App Penetration Testing:

This Pen Testing technique is performed to discover the dangers and weak areas existing within the web apps. Web penetration testing searches for all types of security problems, that might come up because of unsafe development caused by some trouble in the design or code and the recognizable potential dangers existing in the websites or web apps. This testing is mostly utilized by online websites and web applications. It is generally required by ecommerce websites and banking applications that handle online transactions.

Wireless Network Pen Testing:

Wireless Network Pen Testing is performed to check the connection between the various devices like laptops, smartphones, PCs, and tablets linked to the organization’s wifi. Penetration testing stops all kinds of data leakage that might take place while sharing data from one device to the other device with the help of a wifi network.

Multiple Approaches To Network Penetration Test

Based on the information available for the penetration tester, there are 3 significant approaches to penetration testing.

Black Box Testing:

Black Box Testing is generally called external penetration testing. In this case, the penetration tester is not provided with any information related to the company’s IT infrastructure. This procedure is more like the simulation of an actual cyber attack to discover the dangers within the system.

Particularly, in this technique, the testers behave like cyber attackers and attempt to ruin the dangers existing within the system. This procedure is time consuming and might take around 6 weeks to finish.

White Box Testing:

White Box Penetration Testing is also called internal penetration testing, sometimes penetration or glass box penetration testing. In this technique, the pen tester gets full information about the IT infrastructure, source code, and environment.

More detailed and extensive penetration testing is performed where each area is looked into, like the code quality and the standard app design.

This approach also takes 2 to 3 weeks to finish.

Gray Box Testing:

In gray box testing, the pen tester has partial information regarding IT infrastructure and the code structure.

It is a focused approach, as the pen tester has half-knowledge regarding the IT infrastructure or the code structure. This approach is usually a focused one, and the pen tester has half knowledge or access to the inside network or web app and can keep trying to break the possible dangers that would save time and the prices.

The Most Significant Network Penetration Testing Tools Are:

SQLMap:

This one is an open-source tool for penetration testing, used to find out the loopholes with the help of SQL injected into an app. It automates the pen testing procedure, and the tool supports innumerable platforms like Windows, Mac, Linux, etc.

W3af:

In the case of this tool, the web app attack and audit framework are used to detect several weak areas or dangers in web apps. It is used to do away with threats like DNS, cookie handling, cache poisoning, proxy support, and all.

Wireshark:

Wireshark is a fantastic open-source tool available for operating systems like Windows, Linux, Solaris, etc. This tool helps the penetration tester capture and understand the network packets without any hassle. It also makes offline analysis easy and provides multiple options for live capture.

Metasploit Tool:

This is the maximum used penetration testing tool. It is an open-source tool helping users cross-check and handle security tests, recognize flaws, put up a defense, etc.

NMAP Tool:

This is commonly known as network mapper and is mostly used to look for loopholes in the network environment of the enterprise. It is also used for auditing.

Nessus: 

It is a trustworthy network penetration testing tool used by lots of companies around the globe. It aids in scanning IP addresses and websites and finishing sensitive data searches.

John The Ripper Password Cracker Tool:

It is an open-source software used for finding out the dangers present in passwords. This tool automatically recognizes the various password hashes and finds the errors present in the password within the database. Its advanced version is available for Mac, Linux, Hash Suite, and Hash Suite Droid.

There are innumerable qa tools used by software testing professionals. Here’s another blog on the Top 10 tools to conduct successful White Box testing. Check it out!!

Final Thoughts:

Network Penetration Test is the best test procedure. It unravels the important security problems of your system to look for the exploitable dangers posed to their Information Technology Infrastructure or web apps.

As cyber security dangers keep increasing, it becomes important for companies to maintain the IT Infrastructure, Web Applications and keep the systems safe from upcoming threats and dangers. That’s why penetration testing has become essential in the modern digital world with the increasing cyber-security attacks.

HikeQA has a large team of proficient penetration testers, ensuring that you get top-quality penetration testing services for finding out the dangers present in the systems, web applications, or IT infrastructure.

In case of any requirement, call our Security Testing Experts Now.

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