Final Report

The final report is a collection of all of the ethical hacker’s discoveries made during the evaluation.

Vulnerabilities that were found to exist are explained and avoidance procedures specified. If the ethical hacker’s activities were noticed at all, the response of the client’s staff is described and suggestions for improvements are made. If social engineering testing exposed problems, advice is offered on how to raise awareness. This is the main point of the whole exercise: it does clients no good just to tell them that they have problems. The report must include specific advice on how to close the vulnerabilities and keep them closed. The actual techniques employed by the testers are never revealed. This is because the person delivering

If vulnerabilities were found, the report could be extremely dangerous if it fell into the wrong hands.

A competitor might use it for corporate espionage, a hacker might use it to break into the client’s computers, or a prankster might just post the report’s contents on the Web as a joke. The final report is typically delivered directly to an officer of the client organization in hard-copy form. The ethical hackers would have an ongoing responsibility to ensure the safety of any information they retain, so in most cases all information related to the work is destroyed at the end of the contract.

Once the ethical hack is done and the report delivered, the client might ask “So, if I fix these things I’ll have perfect security, right?” Unfortunately, this is not the case. People operate the client’s computers and networks, and people make mistakes. The longer it has been since the testing was performed, the less can be reliably said about the state of a client’s security. A portion of the final report includes recommendations for steps the client should continue to follow in order to reduce the impact of these mistakes in the

Now, certain vulnerability scanners can automate various tasks, from testing to reporting to remediation validation (the process of determining whether vulnerability was fixed). These tools allow you to focus on performing the tests and less on the specific steps involved. However, following a general methodology and understanding what’s going on behind the scenes will help you.

Ethical hacking is similar to beta testing software. Think logically — like a programmer, a radiologist, or a home inspector — to dissect and interact with all the system components to see how they work. You gather information, often in many small pieces, and assemble the pieces of the puzzle. You start at point A with several goals in mind, run your tests (repeating many steps along the way), and move closer until you discover security vulnerabilities at point B.

The process used for ethical hacking is basically the same as the one a malicious attacker would use. The primary differences lie in the goals and how you achieve them. Today’s attacks can come from any angle against any system, not just from the perimeter of your network and the Internet as you might have been taught in the past. Test every possible entry point, including partner, vendor, and customer networks, as well as home users, wireless LANs, and mobile devices. Any human being, computer system, or physical component that protects your computer systems — both inside and