Web application firewall secures websites, web applications, and web services against known and unknown attacks such as SQL injection, path traversal, cross-site scripting, and others that result in web site defacement.

The A record is an Address record. It returns a 32-bit IPv4 address and is most commonly used to map hostnames to an IP address of the host.

-O is a command line switch used for OS detection in Nmap. For example, nmap -O 192.168.1.1.

RADIUS is an AAA protocol that manages network access. RADIUS uses two packet types to manage the full AAA process: Access-Request, which manages authentication and authorization; and Accounting-Request, which manages accounting.

Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) is a 1996 legislation in the United States that protects patients’ health information from being disclosed without their consent or knowledge. It regulates the use and disclosure of Protected Health Information (PHI) held by “covered entities” (generally, health care clearinghouses, employer sponsored health plans, health insurers, and medical service providers that engage in certain transactions.)

NIDS is used to protect a system from network-based threats by monitoring and analyzing network traffic. When the traffic is encrypted, NIDS can only perform packet level analysis, since the contents in the application layer are inaccessible.

-sT means TCP Connect scan
-O means Operating system (OS) detection
-T0 means Paranoid (0) Intrusion Detection System evasion

False positives are mislabeled security alerts. These alerts indicates that there is a threat when in reality no attack has taken place. For example, an alert was triggered indicating a brute force attack, but later on found out that it was just the user who mistyped the password a lot of times.

Public-key algorithms are fundamental security ingredients in cryptosystems, applications and protocols. They underpin various Internet standards, such as Secure Sockets Layer (SSL),Transport Layer Security (TLS), S/MIME, PGP, Internet Key Exchange (IKE or IKEv2), and GPG.

General Data Protection Regulation or GDPR is a regulation that requires businesses to ensure the protection of personal data and privacy of European citizens. It establishes one law across the continent and a single set of rules which applies to companies doing business within EU member states.

Multi-factor authentication (MFA) is a method of logon verification where at least two different factors of proof are required. The three authentication factors are: something you have, something you know, and something you are.

Cross-site request forgery, also known as CSRF is a type of malicious exploit that allows an attacker to trick users to perform actions that they do not intend to perform. Some examples are changing the email address and/or password, or making a funds transfer. Depending on the nature of the action, the attacker might be able to gain full control over the user’s account.

Traceroute is a network diagnostic command that displays the IP and hostname of the machines along the route taken by the packets.

Computer security incident response team or CSIRT’s main responsibility is to expose and avert cyberattacks targeting an organization. It is important to have a security team that is solely focused on incident response (IR).

Passive reconnaissance is the act of gathering information without alerting the potential victim. A hacker may use OSINT or Open Source Intelligence for gathering publicly available information of the targeted individual or organization.

Kismet is a wireless network detector, packet sniffer, and intrusion detection system (IDS) that works with any wireless card supporting raw monitoring (rfmon) mode. It can sniff 802.11a, 802.11b, 802.11g, and 802.11n traffic and works on Linux, Mac OSX, and Windows 10 under the WSL framework.

The password file from /etc/passwd does not contain the passwords.

Null scan is a type of scan that is used to identify listening TCP port. In a null scan, a series of packet is sent to a TCP port with zero bits or no flags set.

Network-based intrusion detection system (NIDS) is used to protect a system from network-based threats by monitoring and analyzing network traffic. NIDS scan all inbound packets and hunt for any suspicious patterns. When threats are discovered, the system takes action based on its severity. This includes notifying administrators, or blocking the source IP address from accessing the network.

Trivial File Transfer Protocol (TFTP) runs on port 69. TFTP allows transferring of files without authentication.

Blind SQL injection is nearly identical to normal SQL injection, the only difference is the way the data is retrieved from the database.

VirtualBox is a virtualization machine that will allow you to run more than one operating system (OS) inside a single machine. This is essential in ethical hacking when performing penetration testing in a virtual environment.

Null scan is a type of scan that is used to identify listening TCP port. In a null scan, a series of packet is sent to a TCP port with zero bits or no flags set. If the target port is open, a null scan will result to a no response since the host will ignore the packet. If the target port is closed, it will respond a RST packet.

PKI or Public Key Infrastructure is a security architecture developed to increase secured transfer of information. The purpose of a PKI is to facilitate the secure electronic transfer of information for a range of network activities such as e-commerce, internet banking and confidential email.

Snort is an open source intrusion prevention and detection system which aims to provide the most effective and comprehensive real-time network defense. It can be used as a packet sniffer, a packet logger, and a network file logging device.

Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) requires that employers have standard national numbers that identify them on standard transactions.

Message Digest Algorithm 5 also known as MD5 is a cryptographic hash algorithm that can be used to create a 128-bit string value from an arbitrary length string.

OSINT or Open-source intelligence refers to any available information that can be accessed from free public sources such as the internet.

The concept of delegating more than one person to complete a task is called Separation of duties. Separation of duties, also known as Segregation of duties has two primary goal. First is to prevent the conflict of interest, and reduce the risk of unauthorized access and fraudulent activity. Second is to identify and mitigate control failures such as security breaches, information theft and circumvention of security controls.

Nessus performs vulnerability, configuration, and compliance assessment. It supports various technologies such as operating systems, network devices, hypervisors, databases, tablets/phones, web servers and critical infrastructure.

Passive reconnaissance is the process of gaining valuable information without being noticed by the potential victim. It is also an act of gathering information without engaging with the system or the individual

False negative happens when no alarm was raised even though an attack has taken place.

-O is a command line switch used for OS detection in Nmap. For example, nmap -O 192.168.1.1.

To check the connections between two machines, the destination port at destination IP must be configured. The destination IP is 10.172.0.150, where the kiwi Syslog is installed.

Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) is a global information security standard by “PCI Security Standards Council” that handles cardholders’ data for debit, credit, prepaid, e-purse, ATM, and POS cards. This offers a comprehensive and robust standard and supporting materials to improve payment card information security. This include an outline of specifications, tools, measurements, and support resources to help organizations protect the cardholder’s information.

Metasploit framework is a very powerful tool which can be used by penetration testers to check vulnerabilities on networks and servers. It provides exploits, payloads, auxiliary functions, encoders, listeners, shellcode, post-exploitation code and nops.

Botnets are used to carry out malicious activities such as account credential leakage, unauthorized access and clicking of ads, sending spam emails, and participating in a DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks. Some of the most familiar examples of a botnets are mirai, lemon duck, and prometei.

In this type of SQL Injection Attack, the cybercriminal uses SQL comment operator “- – “ to ignore part from SQL query search.

WEP or Wired Equivalent Privacy is currently the most widely used Wi-Fi security protocol for securing 802.11 networks. In 2007, a new attack on WEP, the PTW attack, was discovered, which allows an attacker to recover the secret key in less than 60 seconds in some cases.

Injection flaws are commonly found in SQL, LDAP, XPath, NoSQL, OS commands, XML parsers, SMTP headers, expression languages (EL), and Object Relational Mapping (ORM) queries.
The hacker injects malicious SQL code or query into the user input form to manipulate and control the database, allowing them to access and delete modify information and change other applications’ behavior.

Denial of service, or DoS, is an attack on a computer or network which makes it inaccessible to the user. In a DoS attack, a cybercriminal sends high volume traffic to a victim’s system to overload its resources until the system crashes, preventing its users from accessing the network.

Injection attacks can be prevented by doing a source code validation or review. This will allow you to determine the injection flaws and mitigate them before deploying the code into production.

Nikto is an Open Source (GPL) web server scanner that performs comprehensive tests against web servers for multiple items, including over 6700 potentially dangerous files/programs, checks for outdated versions of over 1250 servers, and version specific problems on over 270 servers. It also checks for server configuration items such as the presence of multiple index files, HTTP server options, and will attempt to identify installed web servers and software.

A logic bomb is a malicious program that has been inserted into the victims’ computer network, operating system, or software application. Unlike other malware attacks, logic bombs can remain dormant in a victims’ computer unless the programmed condition that will trigger it is met.

Botnet refers to the group of hijacked or infected computers, servers, mobile devices, and IoT (Internet of Things) devices that are being controlled by a hacker. Botnets are used to carry out malicious activities such as account credential leakage, unauthorized access and clicking of ads, sending spam emails, and participating in a DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks.

Kismet is a wireless network detector, packet sniffer, and intrusion detection system (IDS) that works with any wireless card supporting raw monitoring (rfmon) mode. It can sniff 802.11a, 802.11b, 802.11g, and 802.11n traffic and works on Linux, Mac OSX, and Windows 10 under the WSL framework.

Sandboxed environment, also known as hacking environment, is where we can practice and explore a variety of hacking techniques without compromising other legitimate systems or networks.

Ethical hackers must maintain the confidentiality of a sensitive data. Do not disclose any sensitive information obtained from your ethical hacking to other third parties unless authorized by the owner.

-F (Fast (limited port) scan) Specifies that you wish to scan fewer ports than the default. Normally Nmap scans the most common 1,000 ports for each scanned protocol. With -F, this is reduced to 100.

A service-oriented architecture (SOA) is an architectural pattern in computer software design in which application components provide services to other components via a communications protocol, typically over a network.

The Start of Authority (SOA) record stores important information about a domain or zone such as the primary name server of the domain, the email address of the admin, the last update of domain, the time the server should wait before the refresh.

Social engineering is an act of using an individual to compromise an information system or to give access to a sensitive resource. It exploits human psychology that aims to manipulate the victim into divulging confidential information in the interest of cybercriminals.

Fuzz testing is a quality and assurance checking technique that is used to identify coding errors and security loopholes in a targeted web applications. Huge amounts of random data called ‘Fuzz’ will be generated by the fuzz testing tools (Fuzzers) and be used against the target web application to discover vulnerabilities that can be exploited by various attacks.

In asymmetric key system, public keys are shared or available to anyone, while private keys are held only by the key owner.

Social engineering is an act of using an individual to compromise an information system or to give access to a sensitive resource. It exploits human psychology that aims to manipulate the victim into divulging confidential information in the interest of cybercriminals.

Social engineering is an act of using an individual to compromise an information system or to give access to a sensitive resource. It exploits human psychology that aims to manipulate the victim into divulging confidential information in the interest of cybercriminals.

Incident management is a set of defined processes to identify, analyze, prioritize, and resolve security incidents to restore and prevent further damage in service operations.

SQL Comment uses the two hyphens (–) for single-line or nested comments. Comments inserted with — are terminated by a new line, which is specified with a carriage return.

White hat hackers or “the good guys” are often referred to as ethical hackers. They are authorized persons or individuals specializing in ethical hacking tools, techniques, and methodologies to strengthen an organization’s information systems.

Phase shift keying is the form of Bluetooth modulation used to enable the higher data rates achievable with Bluetooth 2 EDR (Enhanced Data Rate). Two forms of PSK are used: /4 DQPSK, and 8DPSK

To upload files the user must have proper write file permissions.

Nmap is a powerful active reconnaissance tool. This tool can be used to gather lots of information about the target. Let’s see how we can use Nmap in our favor.

Penetration tests data done from previous clients should not be disclosed to third parties.

According to ISO 27001, residual risk is “the risk remaining after risk treatment”.