Volatility Command : Using IMAGEINFO to find type of System Image

1.   After installing Volatility as I gave details in my post here,next we need to start exploiting the power of Volatility.In my next posts ahead I would decipher usage of the general commands used for Volatility.To start with I initiate with IMAGEINFO command whose output tells the suggested profile that you should pass as the parameter to --profile=PROFILE; there may be more than one profile suggestion if profiles are closely related. One can figure out which one is more appropriate by checking the "Image Type" field, which is blank for Service Pack 0 and filled in for other Service Packs.

2.  Next few screen-shots show how I have taken the RAM dump of Windows 7 OS with the help of DUMPIT utility that I downloaded from here.Dumpit vastly simplifies memory acquisition. Effectively Dumpit combines win32dd and win64dd into one tool and is so simple to use even a non-technical user could do acquisition from a USB key. The dump can then be analyzed using VOLATILITY.

3.   Firstly,I show u the windows screen here with the Dumpit file on desktop which I simply click one to get the dump.

 I get the following screen and I click YES

 Further yes to the command prompt screen starts the dump download as seen below :

 I get a success message here and the dump is ready for analysis.

 The .raw file that is generated,I move it to ubuntu for analysis which has Volatility installed.At the terminal I type the command as :

python vol.py -f file_name.raw imageinfo

and in a few minutes I get the profile suggested as Win7SP0x86 / Win7SP1x86

Kali Linux 2.0 : The new release has arrived

Kali Linux ,is a well known Penetration testing distro and also contains a plethora for digital forensics, is widely used by ethical hacker community across the globe and is maintained and developed by the organization known as “Offensive Security”. It comes with over 650 tools pre-installed that help  perform tasks like network analysis, ethical hacking, load & crash testing etc. It is powered by Linux kernel 4.0 and has enhanced support for different graphics cards and desktop environments.The most recent version of Kali has just been released few days back and here I bring you the installation step by step screen shot being installed in Virtual Box.

 Choose Install above

The desktop boots to the following screen...thats it... You are ready to go....

Career in CYBER SECURITY : Where to start ?

1.  I get a lot of queries on my blog posts related to cyber security courses and any time I am in some forum or discussion from all range age  groups regarding serious career scope in India in the field of Cyber Security.Is it worth taking a plunge in a field which currently only has more of a keen interest value rather then offering  lucrative pay packet job?The younger age group which generally has young engineering graduates look little restless of taking the risk but the field is pretty exciting for those who are passionately interested in it.

2.  The field is immense and huge to start with.For a fresher it would be pretty cumbersome to find where to start from.The moment any typical search is made for a cyber security course on google,the results are too huge and confusing to get started on.For a novice guy who doesn’t  have any background in this field but keen to start a career in this field, I would submit few first steps to start before ways and career road automatically starts guiding ahead.

3.   Firstly,make it very clear in your mind that this field is very dynamic...you have to be continuously on your toes to be updated around what’s happening in this field.Millions of cyber incidents are happening,thousands of zero days are being discovered,thousands of case studies are being released about various cyber incidents and as you start understanding you need to prioritize of what all to grasp in detail .....follow up good tweets of cyber security experts.The courses you do in this field will not be like the typical graduation certification that you do once and will make you a B.Tech for the rest of your life without ever some one asking about the syllaabi.Most of the course and certification have a shelf life of 2-3 years after which you need to renew them to continue your professional standing in the market.

4.   The best thing about this field is that you can build your career and get your basics clear by putting in you hard-work along with the world of open-source that’s your window to knowledge bank.Be it the white papers or applications or Operating systems etc most of the entire gambit of tools is free....yes...for last about 8-9 years of my association with the field I have not bought or purchased any software or OS or toolkit to practice basic hacks and penetration tests.

5.   For a start in respect of courses....I would submit that most of the courses valued globally like CEH,CISSP etc by EC-COUNCIL are pretty costly and just doing them does not guarantee anything with respect to job.You have to be aware of lots besides these courses.For a start for a typical Indian novice fresher I would recommend to start with CCCSP,CCCS etc...links given below :

http://cdac.in/index.aspx?id=cyber_security for courses offered by CDAC on cyber security and forensics.

http://esikshak.in/eSikshak/help/English/eSikshak/cccs.htm for CCCS by CDAC

http://esikshak.in/eSikshak/help/English/eSikshak/CCCSP.html for CCCSP by CDAC

more listed at http://anupriti.blogspot.in/2012/12/cyber-security-courses-in-india.html ....though slightly old post...but everything holds good today...

6. Besides these courses which only give a very basic over view of the field,you should start getting conversant with LINUX flavors available viz UBUNTU, Fedora, OpenSuse, Linux MInt etc to mention a few....besides a horde of excellent security distros are available with all possible youtube videos and manuals on the net for helping from scratch.Get conversant and start playing with maximum tools available in these.Few of the distros that I would recommend are listed  below :

- ARCHASSAULT at https://archassault.org/

- Kali Linux at

- BackBox at

- BackTrack R3 at

- Knoppix STD

- Pentoo

- DEFT

- Parrot

- Caine

- Samurai Web Testing framework

- Matriux Krypton

- Bugtraq

- Node zero

- Cyb org

- Helix

- Network SEcurity Toolkit

- Wireshark(not an OS)

- GRML

- Chaos

- Katana

-  Damn Vulnerable Linux

- Auditor

and I must tell you these are only few to test before you start getting basic idea of what’s happening around.

7.   You have to be passionate enough to carry yourself successfully in this field.The moment you are out of touch for whatever reasons you have a lot to catch.Every thing is available on the net..be it the study material...be it any software to start.....you actually do not straight away enrol for a course..prepare yourself with the basics as available vide these distros...basic linux and then do some course to start building your documented profile.If you have reached reading here and you have queries you can get back to me here ....post a comment.

Zenmap:GUI for NMAP@Kali Linux

1.     Most of us would have heard of the pretty famous Nmap ("Network Mapper") ,a free and open source (license) utility for network discovery and security auditing.It uses raw IP packets in novel ways to determine what hosts are available on the network, what services those hosts are offering, what operating systems they are running, what type of packet filters/firewalls are in use, and dozens of other characteristics. Designed to rapidly scan large networks Nmap runs on all major computer operating systems.Official binary packages are available for Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X. In addition to the classic command-line Nmap executable, the Nmap suite includes an advanced GUI and results viewer (Zenmap), a flexible data transfer, redirection, and debugging tool (Ncat), a utility for comparing scan results (Ndiff), and a packet generation and response analysis tool (Nping).In this post the focus will be to introduce Zenmap...a kind of GUI for running NMAP commands which is otherwise terminal based.

2.   To open Zenmap, go to the Backtrack menu. Navigate to Information Mapping - DNS Analysis, and click Zenmap.

3.   Notice that under the Profile menu that there are several options to determine what type of scan you would like to run, as shown in the following screenshot:

4.    The first step is creating a new profile. A profile in Zenmap allows a Penetration Tester to create what type of scan to execute and what different options to include.Navigate to the Profile menu and select New Profile as shown in the following screenshot:

5.   When you select New Profile, the profile editor will launch. You will need to give your profile a descriptive name. For example, you can call the profile testscan as I have named here.Optionally, you can give the profile a description. During your course of using Zenmap you will probably create many profiles and make multiple scans.

6.    Zenmap is the best way to get output from Nmap scans. Zenmap offers a rich graphical user interface that displays scans that can be exported into different formats, such as text or Microsoft Excel.

Maltego : Open source Intelligence and Forensics Application

1.  In this post I am giving a stepped screen shot for installing and using the application MALTEGO that comes inbuilt to Kali Linux.Maltego, is an open source intelligence and forensics application. It allows for the mining and gathering of information as well as the representation of information in a meaningful way. Coupled with its graphing libraries, Maltego, allows  to identify key relationships between information and identify previously unknown relationships between them. It is a must-have tool in the forensics.security and intelligence fields.

2.   Maltego permits creating custom entities, allowing it to represent any type of information in addition to the basic entity types which are part of the software. The basic focus of the application is analyzing real-world relationships between people, groups, websites, domains, networks, internet infrastructure, and affiliations with online services such as Twitter and Facebook.

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