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Sybex_CEH_v10_Certified_Ethical

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You’re thinking about becoming a Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH). No matter what

variation of security testing you are performing—ethical hacking, penetration testing, red

teaming or application assessment—the skills and knowledge necessary to achieve this cer-

tification are in demand. Even the idea of security testing and ethical hacking is evolving as

businesses and organizations begin to have a better understanding of the adversaries they

are facing. It’s no longer the so-called script kiddies that businesses felt they were fending

off for so long. Today’s adversary is organized, well-funded, and determined. This means

testing requires different tactics.

Depending on who you are listening to, 80–90 percent of attacks today use social engi-

neering. The old technique of looking for technical vulnerabilities in network services is

simply not how attackers are getting into networks. Networks that are focused on applying

a defense in depth approach, hardening the outside, may end up being susceptible to attacks

from the inside, which is what happens when desktop systems are compromised. The skills

needed to identify vulnerabilities and recommend remediations are evolving, along with the

tactics and techniques used by attackers.

This book is written to help you understand the breadth of content you will need

to know to obtain the CEH certification. You will find a lot of concepts to provide

you a foundation that can be applied to the skills required for the certification. While

you can read this book cover to cover, for a substantial chunk of the subjects getting

hands-on experience is essential. The concepts are often demonstrated through the use

of tools. Following along with these demonstrations and using the tools yourself will

help you understand the tools and how to use them. Many of the demonstrations are

done in Kali Linux, though many of the tools have Windows analogs if you are more

comfortable there.

We can’t get through this without talking about ethics, though you will find it men-

tioned several places throughout the book. This is serious, and not only because it’s a huge

part of the basis for the certification. It’s also essential for protecting yourself and the

people you are working for. The very short version of it is do not do anything that would

cause damage to systems or your employer. There is much more to it than that, which you’ll

read more about in Chapter 1 as a starting point. It’s necessary to start wrapping your head

around the ethics involved in this exam and profession. You will have to sign an agreement

as part of achieving your certification.

At the end of each chapter, you will find a set of questions. This will help you to dem -

onstrate to yourself that you understand the content. Most of the questions are multiple

choice, which is the question format used for the CEH exam. These questions, along

with the hands-on experience you take advantage of, will be good preparation for taking

the exam.

What Is a CEH?

The Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH) exam is to validate that those holding the certification

understand the broad range of subject matter that is required for someone to be an effective

ethical hacker. The reality is that most days, if you are paying attention to the news, you

will see a news story about a company that has been compromised and had data stolen, a

government that has been attacked, or even enormous denial of service attacks, making it

difficult for users to gain access to business resources.

The CEH is a certification that recognizes the importance of identifying security issues

in order to get them remediated. This is one way companies can protect themselves against

attacks—by getting there before the attackers do. It requires someone who knows how to

follow techniques that attackers would normally use. Just running scans using automated

tools is insufficient because as good as security scanners may be, they will identify false

positives—cases where the scanner indicates an issue that isn’t really an issue. Additionally,

they will miss a lot of vulnerabilities—false negatives—for a variety of reasons, including

the fact that the vulnerability or attack may not be known.

Because companies need to understand where they are vulnerable to attack, they need

people who are able to identify those vulnerabilities, which can be very complex. Scanners

are a good start, but being able to find holes in complex networks can take the creative

intelligence that humans offer. This is why we need ethical hackers. These are people who

can take extensive knowledge of a broad range of technical subjects and use it to identify

vulnerabilities that can be exploited.

The important part of that two-word phrase, by the way, is “ethical.” Companies have

protections in place because they have resources they don’t want stolen or damaged. When

they bring in someone who is looking for vulnerabilities to exploit, they need to be certain

that nothing will be stolen or damaged. They also need to be certain that anything that

may be seen or reviewed isn’t shared with anyone else. This is especially true when it comes

to any vulnerabilities that have been identified.

The CEH exam, then, has a dual purpose. It not only tests deeply technical knowledge

but also binds anyone who is a certification holder to a code of conduct. Not only will you

be expected to know the content and expectations of that code of conduct, you will be

expected to live by that code. When companies hire or contract to people who have their

CEH certification, they can be assured they have brought on someone with discretion who

can keep their secrets and provide them with professional service in order to help improve

their security posture and keep their important resources protected.

The Subject Matter

If you were to take the CEH v10 training, you would have to go through the following

modules:

■ ■ Introduction to Ethical Hacking

■ ■ Footprinting and Reconnaissance

■ ■ Scanning Networks

■ ■ Enumeration

■ ■ Vulnerability Analysis

■ ■ System Hacking

■ ■ Malware Threats

■ ■ Sniffing

■ ■ Social Engineering

■ ■ Denial of Service

■ ■ Session Hijacking

■ ■ Evading IDSs, Firewalls, and Honeypots

■ ■ Hacking Web Servers

■ ■ Hacking Web Applications

■ ■ SQL Injection

■ ■ Hacking Wireless Networks

■ ■ Hacking Mobile Platforms

■ ■ IoT Hacking

■ ■ Cloud Computing

■ ■ Cryptography

As you can see, the range of subjects is very broad. Beyond knowing the concepts associ-

ated with these topics, you will be expected to know about various tools that may be used

to perform the actions associated with the concepts you are learning. You will need to

know tools like nmap for port scanning, for example. You may need to know proxy-based

web application attack tools. For wireless network attacks, you may need to know about

the aircrack-ng suite of tools. For every module listed above, there are potentially dozens of