Hello
First just to get this in C programming is a good skill. C++ is also not
bad to have. This said, what the hell is this doing in a pen test
discussion.
/*
** start rant
*/
How can anyone here honestly state that programming skills are needed
for pen testing? An audit of source code is NOT a pen test. This does
require coding skills - they are not the same thing and anyone who
thinks they are is under a delusion.
Are we talking "Vulnerability Research' or Pen. Tests? Do we all
understand that they are NOT the same thing?
If a business/organisation/etc is paying you for 20 hours of applied
testing - I certainly hope that you are not going off on some ill
conceived tangent and effectively taking their money without doing the
service you have been commissioned for?
Thomas is correct "Time is money - your customers money" - Do not forget
this!
Welcome to reality. There ARE time constraints. You are not paid to
research every possible theoretical vulnerability or find a new buffer
overflow in a Pen Test!
No wonder businesses do not trust information security. No wonder the
profession is not being taken as seriously as it should be.
/*
** Rant complete
*/
Regards
Craig
-----Original Message-----
From: thomas springer [mailto:tuevsec@gmx.net]
Sent: 11 February 2006 3:30
To: johnny Mnemonic
Cc: pen-test@securityfocus.com
Subject: Re: Programming skills for Pen Testers
johnny Mnemonic wrote:
ok we all know that in addition to good network, host and application
security skills, programming in C is a pre-requisite for a decent pen
tester or at least one who wants to write their own security tools or
simply audit the open source code they use. My question is, despite
their similarities should a pen tester be concentrating on C or C++ ?
That's it!
Time is money - your customers money. Most of my pentest-programming is
quick and dirty and has to be highly adoptable - therefore it is usually
done in high-level-languages like perl, python, vbscript, even nessus'
nasl-language using external tools (hping etc) where applicable.
i won't even think of doing object-oriented c++-programming for a
pentest.
things get different if you think of creating a "big" product like
nessus or iss-scanner - but if you code stuff like this you are probably
more a coder than a pentester... :)
tom
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