System and Cybersecurity testing using Kali Linux

Running head: SYSTEM AND CYBERSECURITY TESTING USING KALI LINUX
System and Cybersecurity testing using Kali Linux
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Authors note

1SYSTEM AND CYBERSECURITY TESTING USING KALI LINUX
Abstract
This paper contributes to the discussion about two of the most important tools nmap
and OpenSSL which plays vital roles in securing the data transmission and ports of the
system in different systems inside a network. Different sections of this report contributes to
the description about the mentioned tools that may help the system administrators to protect
the systems.

2SYSTEM AND CYBERSECURITY TESTING USING KALI LINUX
Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................3
Tool description.........................................................................................................................3
Role in cybersecurity..................................................................................................................5
Scenario description...................................................................................................................6
Evaluation................................................................................................................................14
References................................................................................................................................18

3SYSTEM AND CYBERSECURITY TESTING USING KALI LINUX
Introduction
With the wide spread use of the internet as medium by the organizations and
individuals, number of cyber-attacks is increasing every day. According to the government
surveys for the year 2018 four out of ten business organizations and two out of ten charitable
organizations are the victims of cyber-attacks (Markowsky and Markowsky 2015). More
threatening fact about these attacks are not only the sheer volume but the nature of the attacks
which are getting more complexity.
Different sections of this report contributes to the use of the different tools in the
attacks, tools that can be used as the counter measures to secure the system or the
organizational network. In addition to that detailed description as well as their role in the
cyber security is also disused in the process of the evaluation of the tools.
Tool description
nmap: For this project the selected tool for carrying out the penetration attacks is
“nmap.” Use of this tool can help the attacker in order to get the details of the different ports
of a system inside a network.
following are the some of the best features of “nmap” that makes it one of the best
and preferred tools by the administrators.
Cross platform and Portable: the nmap tool can be used on most of the widely used
operating systems. This includes the operating systems like Solaris, IRIX Linux,
Open/Free/Net BSD, Sun OS, Mac OS X and so on. For Windows operating system this tool
is still in the beta phase (Rohrmann, Patton and Chen 2016).
Flexible: This tool supports numerous advanced techniques in order to map
the targeted networks that may contain firewalls, routers, and other devices as obstacles. In

4SYSTEM AND CYBERSECURITY TESTING USING KALI LINUX
addition to that it can work for both TCP & UDP protocols, OS detection and other network
scanning functionalities. There are several options that are available that can be used to get
the details of the ports. Inside a network, the ports of the system can be one of the following
states;
open, closed, filtered, unfiltered, open|filtered, closed|filtered;
open ports are the most vulnerable from the security point of view. As these ports
accepts the UDP datagrams or TCP connections from other systems (Markowsky and
Markowsky 2015). Mostly, the attackers exploit this type of ports. In addition to that, these
ports are also useful for gaining information about the applications and thus exploitations of
the vulnerabilities of those applications.
There are multiple options of the nmap command through which the attacker or
network administrator can filter a scope of IPs inside a network. Filtering a wide range of IPs
is helpful when attempting to figure out where a cyber-attack might happen (Rodofile, Radke
and Foo 2016). Having the capacity to examine numerous IPs additionally spares important
time when tracing for a attack inside a network. the command for this function is
nmap 192.168.0.1-20
OpenSSL
The selected tool used by the defender to protect the information systems and
networks is OpenSSL. This is a widely used crypt-library which are used by the system
administrators in order to implements SSL/ TLS protocols in order make the data
communication secure over some organizational networks.
In order secure the data transmission over internet or organizational network different
type of web servers like Postfix, Apache web server, PHP and so on. Use of this tools helps

5SYSTEM AND CYBERSECURITY TESTING USING KALI LINUX
in the users to get and use the different cryptographic algorithms that includes Blowfish,
AES, DES and so on. In addition to that, cryptographic hash functions like SHA-1, MD5,
MD4, SHA-2 along with that different Public-key cryptography algorithms are also available
such as Diffie-Hellman key exchange, RSA as well as DSA.
Role in cybersecurity
Role of nmap
As the data nmap is highly configurable thus it helps in processing their own scan for
the targeted network. In this way the system or network administrator can find out the open
ports and observe that what type of data the systems are spilling to the potential hackers
through the open or unfiltered ports.
For an example we can consider a Windows OS based system often utilizes many
ports to c communicate with the different other system or applications inside the network
(Markowsky and Markowsky 2015). in this scenario each open port is considered as the
potential course in to system for the attacker.
Through the Port checking utilizing the h Nmap is a quick and viable approach to
distinguish which ports are open, what administrations are running on them and where frail
spots exist that needs attention to reduce the vulnerability against any kind of cyber-attack
(Rodofile, Radke and Foo 2016). Closing the unnecessary open ports helps in decreasing the
quantity of possibly exploitable administrations.
Furthermore, when the system administrator has completely mapped the network or
the system, they can likewise check whether any sudden changes have happened since the
last scan of the ports (Tanizawa et al. 2017). For instance, an information system affected
some malware will try to open ports so as to tune in for directions from the attacker.