As our infrastructure grows, we may have to use secret data of different sensitivity. If our “Infrastructure as Code” is developed by different teams, maybe every team wants to protect their own passwords, API tokens, keys, etc with different Vault passwords. This is why we use IDs in Ansible Vault.
Continue reading “Using different Ansible Vault passwords with vault-id”Tag: cyber security
Handling sensitive data with Ansible Vault: encrypting strings instead of files
Sometimes we may want to encrypt only a single variable value or a short piece of text that we need to use in our playbook or role. For example, we may want to encrypt a user password or an API key, and not an entire file. Encrypting single variables is also a good idea when we keep our files in Source Control Management like Git.
Ansible Vault has a function to encrypt only parts of files, to encrypt variables instead of the whole file.
Continue reading “Handling sensitive data with Ansible Vault: encrypting strings instead of files”How to protect sensitive data with encrypted files (or elements) in Ansible – Ansible Vault
When we automate configurations we cannot avoid providing secrets to Ansible. The last thing we want is our secret data running around in plain text files on our control node. Luckily Ansible has a tool for this.
Ansible Vault is an integrated encryption tool in Ansible to manage sensitive data like passwords, keys and certificates. As with most parts of Ansible, we can start simple, and complexity can come later on.
Continue reading “How to protect sensitive data with encrypted files (or elements) in Ansible – Ansible Vault”TryHackMe | Attacktive Directory [write-up]
Microsoft Active Directory can be found at every medium/large organization (99% according to the THM room). This is why it is a common target for black hats and other malicious actors. In the Attacktive Directory room we can learn a lot about targeting the services in an AD.
I use the THM in-browser Kali Linux for this task!
Continue reading “TryHackMe | Attacktive Directory [write-up]”A closer look at SQL and SQL Injection
We worked with SQL nowadays, and we used some SQL Injections in the web browser and in Burp Suit, but what is an SQL Injection by the way? Let’s make a step back and look at the databases and SQL a bit!
Continue reading “A closer look at SQL and SQL Injection”How to brute force a web application password with Burp Suite? Basic dictionary attack in practice!
With Burp Suite we can initiate dictionary attacks against a website. This time in this simulated attack we will brute force the login field of the Juice Shop web application. We already know the email address of an admin user, so we have to make sure to find the right password.
Important note: hacking in the wild is illegal! Do NOT do it out of the lab, unless you are a penetration tester with a signed contract!
Continue reading “How to brute force a web application password with Burp Suite? Basic dictionary attack in practice!”How to brute force FTP users and passwords with Hydra? Ethical Hacking in real life!
In this article we will investigate other functionalities of the Cyber Security test tool Hydra. In one of the previous articles we cracked a user password on a Linux system through SSH. In this example we do not know the exact username of any FTP user. We will create a list of possible usernames along our password list. All of these operations happen in a personal lab.
Important note: hacking in the wild is illegal! Do NOT do it out of the lab, unless you are a penetration tester with a signed contract!
Continue reading “How to brute force FTP users and passwords with Hydra? Ethical Hacking in real life!”How to backup VMWare Workstation Player machines?
The Workstation Player of VMWare is a lightweight and free desktop virtualization hypervisor for non-commercial users. We can learn about virtualization and use it for practicing for free. We can run Windows, Linux and BSD systems on our host machine. The Workstation Player supports Windows and Linux as host for virtualization.
The free solution comes with some limitations. The following technique will let us to take backups or snapshots of our virtual machines. Only use it for personal practice and learning! Business and nonprofit use is considered commercial use!
Continue reading “How to backup VMWare Workstation Player machines?”How to break in web applications using Burp Suite? Real web hacking in practice as a Penetration Tester!
The OWASP Top 10 is a standard awareness document that lists the most common weaknesses of modern web applications. Burp Suite will help our application security testing along the Developer Mode of the browser. We will break in to the OWASP Juice Shop, the most modern and sophisticated insecure web shop.
Important note: hacking in the wild is illegal! Do NOT do it out of the lab, unless you are a penetration tester with a signed contract!
Continue reading “How to break in web applications using Burp Suite? Real web hacking in practice as a Penetration Tester!”TryHackMe | Kenobi [write-up]
In this room we practice to enumerate and exploit vulnerabilities on Linux servers.
How to crack passwords with John the Ripper? Password hacking in real practice as an Ethical Hacker!
In the first part of this series we found out a user’s password with Hydra with simply attacking his account via SSH. It is a so called “dictionary attack”, and because of the lack of security measurements we could get into the remote system.
In this exercise we continue our Ethical Hacking journey and we will find a way to get root privileges on the remote machine. This is called privilege escalation.
Important note: cracking passwords in the wild is illegal! Do NOT do it out of the lab, unless you are a penetration tester with a signed contract!
Continue reading “How to crack passwords with John the Ripper? Password hacking in real practice as an Ethical Hacker!”TryHackMe | Vulnversity [write-up]
Let’s walk through the Vulnversity room of tryhackme.com. This write-up is written for educational purposes. Please do not use it for cheating or skipping the tasks.
How to brute force and crack SSH passwords with Hydra? Ethical Hacking in real practice!
In this presentation we will crack the password of a general Linux user via SSH in our personal lab. The machine from which we start the attack is a Kali Linux box, and the attacked machine is an ordinary Debian Linux on which a user set a weak password. Unfortunately the security settings are weak on the target host, so we have a great chance for success. We already know the name of the user.
Important note: cracking passwords in the wild is illegal! Do NOT do it out of the lab, unless you are a penetration tester with a signed contract!
Continue reading “How to brute force and crack SSH passwords with Hydra? Ethical Hacking in real practice!”TryHackMe | OWASP Juice Shop [write-up]
In this article I go through the OWASP Juice Shop room of tryhackme.com. This room is a practical review of the OWASP Top 10 vulnerabilities. This is a base security consideration for those who want to develop web applications.
How and why to use software RAID on Linux?
RAID stands for Redundant Array of Independent Disks. It is used for performance, availability and security reasons. Different virtual and physical storage devices can be combined into logical RAID arrays in different configuration levels (like RAID 0 is striping and RAID 1 is mirroring). The array looks like a single device on the computer. RAID is useful when we want to handle a large amount of data. It enhances speed and increases our storage capacity. The possible data loss because of disk failure is mitigated by adding parity disks to our configuration.
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