Penetration Testing A - Z: Vulnerability Security and Tools

This book is intended for the security administrators, systems administrators, technology auditors, and other authorized representatives of companies that want to legitimately test their security posture and intrusion detection or incident response capabilities. In addition, other individuals who need to assess systems and network security may find the tools and techniques described in this book useful. It is designed as a beginner's book for enhancing network security through penetration testing. No previous knowledge of penetration testing is required, but an understanding of networking, TCP/IP, Windows NT/2000, network security, and UNIX is needed to be able to execute a penetration test.
A word of caution: Although this book details the processes and tools for performing a penetration test, it does not describe how to do this without alerting network security devices. Many of these techniques will be detected and should not be performed without the written consent of the owners of the target systems. We intend for this book to be not a how-to hack manual but rather a framework for performing a systematic network security review. Intrusion detection mechanisms on most networks today have become very sophisticated and, if configured properly, can be used to track anyone practicing these techniques on a network.