Other Industry Certifications

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 certification 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 engineering. 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 mentioned 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 demonstrate 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.