From Hacking to Report Writing: An Introduction to Security and Penetration Testing

Learn everything you need to know to become a professional security and penetration tester. It simplifies hands-on security and penetration testing by breaking down each step of the process so that finding vulnerabilities and misconfigurations becomes easy. The book explains how to methodically locate, exploit, and professionally report security weaknesses using techniques such as SQL-injection, denial-of-service attacks, and password hacking.

Although From Hacking to Report Writing will give you the technical know-how needed to carry out advanced security tests, it also offers insight into crafting professional looking reports describing your work and how your customers can benefit from it. The book will give you the tools you need to clearly communicate the benefits of high-quality security and penetration testing to IT-management, executives and other stakeholders.

Embedded in the book are a number of on-the-job stories that will give you a good understandingof how you can apply what you have learned to real-world situations.

We live in a time where computer security is more important than ever. Staying one step ahead of hackers has never been a bigger challenge. From Hacking to Report Writing clarifies how you can sleep better at night knowing that your network has been thoroughly tested.

What you’ll learn

• Clearly understand why security and penetration testing is important
  
• Find vulnerabilities in any system using the same techniques as hackers do
  
• Write professional looking reports
  
• Know which security and penetration testing method to apply for any given situation
  
• Successfully hold together a security and penetration test project
  

Who This Book Is For

Aspiring security and penetration testers, security consultants, security and penetration testers, IT managers, andsecurity researchers.

Robert Svensson has had pretty much every IT job one can imagine: he’s been yelled at over the phone taking support calls, he’s done IT security incident management for multi-nationals, he’s worked with startups, he’s programmed and so on… but over the last ten years or so IT security has been his sole focus. In his case, that means he’s done countless penetration tests, written numerous reports and somehow managed to get rehired to do it all over again. And yeah, he fell in love with computers the second he unwrapped the commodore 64 he got for Christmas about a million years ago―it all started there.

One of Robert’s goals in writing this book is to put out the book he wish he had read when he first started doing penetration tests―a book that also clearly explains why security testing is important, not just how it’s done. However, the number one reason why he’s writing this book is simple: passion. He loves security and learning as much about it as he possibly can. And havingworked as a teacher, he knows no better way to learn than to teach.