SANS InfoSec Reading Room - Scripting Tips

Most of the computer security white papers in the Reading Room have been written by students seeking GIAC certification to fulfill part of their certification requirements and are provided by SANS as a resource to benefit the security community at large. SANS attempts to ensure the accuracy of information, but papers are published "as is". Errors or inconsistencies may exist or may be introduced over time as material becomes dated. If you suspect a serious error, please contact webmaster@sans.org.

Featuring 5 papers as of May 20, 2013

Using Windows Script Host and COM to Hack Windows

By: Alex Ginos (posted on January 3, 2011)

During the exploitation phase of penetration testing, the attacker may establish a “beachhead” on a target machine by running an exploit against a vulnerable network service. Often this results in a command prompt. At this point, the question becomes: “How can the command line be used to advantage to access sensitive information, escalate privileges and find and attack other hosts?” There are numerous useful hacking tools that can help with this but initially they are unlikely to be present on the compromised system. The attacker needs to bootstrap the process of further discovery and exploitation using only the limited tools and privileges available at the command prompt. In some cases, it may be necessary to evade detection by avoiding suspicious executables that may be flagged by anti-malware software running on the target. This paper explores the possibilities of using command line scripting tools and software components that are likely to be present on most Microsoft Windows systems to facilitate penetration testing.

Capturing and Analyzing Packets with Perl

By: John Brozycki (posted on January 28, 2010)

The steps in setting up a Windows system with Perl and the necessary add-ons to be able to run and create packet capturing Perl scripts.

Practical PERL for Security Practitioners

By: Holt Sorenson (posted on March 25, 2004)

This paper introduces PERL as a useful, flexible, and extensible tool for the security practitioner. References to resources are provided so that the reader may expand their knowledge beyond the concepts presented here.

Using Scripts to Exploit and Mitigate Risks

By: Robert G. Rodriguez (posted on February 5, 2004)

This paper discusses how scripts can best help you and your unique situations by covering some of the commands that really make a script what it is; powerful.

Using The WinBatch Scripting Language To Automate Security In An NT4 Environment

By: Terry Chapman (posted on October 31, 2003)

In this document I will endeavor to guide you through a couple of relatively simple scripts in order to demonstrate that getting started with scripting is not as a daunting task as you may have considered.