All right, in the last lecture, we talked about the importance of V and now let us have a look at
the first step of vulnerability assessment.
So the first step is to have a legal documentation.
You cannot just randomly go and start performing our liberty assessment.
You first need to seek proper authorization from the owner because compromising or attacking a system
without prior authorization is a crime.
So do not carry out random tests on different organizations websites.
First, seek proper authorization and then on the move ahead in performing a proper V.
The next step that is a second step is to identify the scope.
Now there are some websites who have different domains.
For example, let us consider APL's Web site.
One domain can be about my book.
Another domain of the website describes the word I watch.
Another domain can be about IPAC.
So first you need to identify the scope of vulnerability assessment because you may think this is just
a small step.
But actually it takes it takes a lot of effort.
It takes many days to carry out a single penetration test or a vulnerability assessment in penetration
testing.
You identify the vulnerabilities and then try to exploit and gain the access when it comes to where
you just identify the vulnerabilities and reported.
So you have to first get yourself clear with the scope.
If the if the owner says no, you cannot scan domain triennium in full, then you should not go for
it.
OK, so you first must decide the scope of the assessment.
The next is information assessment.
Those who are very experienced when it comes to ethical hacking or vapidity always find out the information
related to the scope.
You cannot just start using random tools and then carry out a test.
Those are script kiddies who just use the tools and start performing assessment.
You first have to find out the proper knowledge when it comes to information, I suspect so.
If you are trying to ask a girl or a boy for a date, you first find out the information, right, that
he or she lives.
What is his or her favorite color?
Favorite food, right.
Don't just ask the person on a date.
So you first find out the information.
No offense to people.
I was just trying to give an analogy for you.
OK, the fourth step is vulnerability assessment.
After you have decided the scope, after you find out the information, now is the time to perform a
proper vulnerability assessment in which you identify the different vulnerabilities.
The fifth, this penetration testing, as I said then you are done with VA.
You have to check whether those bugs really exist or not.
Now, when it comes to a proper professional vulnerability assessment, it is not possible to do the
entire VA manually.
OK, so you use automated tools like Magnus's at Kinetics Labs that proxy Batsuit tools.
So all these tools are automated civil liberty scanners which scan the website automatically and then
give you the vulnerabilities.
All right.
But again, it is your job to test whether the vulnerabilities are present or not.
So in that penetration testing comes into picture, where the attacker or where the hacker, the ethical
hacker specifically manually checks for each and every one liberty present on the system.
The sixth is gaining access now that you have got the information, you have exploited the bugs.
It's time to gain the access.
So gaining access is very important because if you are able to gain access, then there is point in
reporting that will help.
So if you are if you're getting any access, whether it is an admin level access or.
Executive level access, you have to gain the access next is privileges.
Now let's say you are an attacker.
You are an ethical hacker.
And you are not assigned a member of the website education website.
Lets say X, Y, Z, dot com is the educational website.
And you are an external pen tester hired to test the website.
You don't have an account on the website, but now that you have performed a penetration test, you're
able to get the access of a student who has enrolled in some courses.
So that is gaining access fees.
Once you have the access of student, you again test for bugs, which will give you the access of the
administrator.
And if you are able to get the access of administrator, then that is known as privileged escalation.
Once you perform the privilege escalation and once you have identified all the bugs present in the system,
it can be a skill injection.
It can be database exploitation.
It can be cross site scripting attack.
It can be brute forcing attack.
Or it can be any attack which we'll be seeing in the next upcoming sections of ethical hacking.
So once you are done with all these attacks, it's time to write a report with everything.
So you have to mention the validity type.
You have to mention the security.
You have to attach the screenshots, if possible, attach a video in the report, then you have to write
the steps how you exploited the bug.
Then after that, you have to submit the report to the management.
And if the management approves the report, you have to then provide the patch, OK?
You just don't have to, you know, did discover the vulnerability and leave as it is.
It is your job to provide a proper batch.
But again, one thing that I would like to tell you is that all these things are not done all alone
by you.
You have a team of analysts who do different jobs.
So let's say there's a team of five people, two people are involved in legal documentation and report
writing to are involved in scope assessment, information assessment and vulnerability assessment,
you are involved in two testing and another one is involved in Bache assistance.
In this way, a team works and the final step is revalidation.
You have to check if the patch is properly installed and if the system is secure or not.
So all these 10 steps form of celebrity assessment.
So it's such a vulnerability.
Assessments are carried out in the organizations and these should be carried out every month so as to
prevent, detect and these assessments take.
One assessment takes at least two to three days.
So depending upon the nature and the scope of the assessment, it may take longer or it may take shorter.
But you don't have to rush and don't have to, you know, depend upon the automatic results.
And that is why it is important to have a team of people who can work together.
For example, let's say you have a member who doesn't like to code and who doesn't like to hack into
systems.
So what he can do is he can deal with legal documentation, SCOP assessment and report generation.
That is one guy who is good at vulnerability knowledge, but he don't want to hack into systems.
He's not that interesting.
So what he can do is he can carry out the information assessment.
He can carry out the vulnerability assessment and then provide you all the vulnerabilities.
You can carry out penetration testing and all the steps.
Five, six, seven, eight is already being done by the first guy and nine step batch assistant is done
by the one who, you know, has a good knowledge of programming skills and who knows how to patch the
vulnerabilities.
And again, that can be done by you in this way.
A team effort is required to carry out effective penetration test.
All right.
These were the ten steps for effective vulnerability assessment.
If you still have any doubts, please feel free to answer and ask us in the comments section.
They'll try to answer these questions as soon as we can.
Great.
I know this is a lot of information for you as a beginner, but trust me, this is the best course which
will help you to get started from scratch to cybersecurity professional.
All right.
Keep the momentum going.
I will see you in the next lecture where we'll talk about the need for cybersecurity in today's world.