Penetration Test & Security Assessment

An acquisition in November 2019 prompted the IT manager of Anonymous Company Y to enlist our security services in a full-spectrum security assessment in order to fulfil the board’s request.

The board felt that they required a level of security assurance to satisfy their own curiosity, and to ensure that they were at a sufficient level of managed risk that would allow them to conduct their business efficiently and effectively. They also wanted to ensure that they had no substantial holes in their security that could allow for a breech and a subsequent potential fine from the Information Commissioner’s Office or brand reputation damage.

We spent a couple of weeks discussing the requirement with the customer, and what their aims and expectations were. This is important because it enabled us to accurately create a truly bespoke assessment that met all their requirements, aims and expectations.

As this was a more complex security assessment, the testing team made use of the wealth of expertise and knowledge within our organisation. This enabled the testers to efficiently assess the customer’s security with an unbiased and exacting methodology.

The project included assessing the security elements of the internal and external networks, wireless network infrastructure and the physical security of the building. We were also commissioned to conduct a simulated phishing campaign.

The physical aspect of the project lasted a week, and involved numerous attempts to breach not only the physical security of the building, but also to test the customer’s security policies and procedures that were in place.

The testing team were able to gain access to the building, allowing them to effectively assess the customer’s wireless network. Some creative, “outside the box” thinking was required in order to breach the internal network. The tester was able to “tailgate” (follow-in) the postman, a couple of unsuspecting employees, and masqueraded as a delivery person in order to gain access to the building. Once access was gained, the team made use of specialist equipment and bespoke software that allowed them to conduct a “Man in the Middle” attack. The specialist equipment intercepted all the wireless signals from host clients before passing them onto the real wireless access point. This captured information was then heavily analysed before a bespoke wordlist was created and a subsequent “brute-force” attack on the captured information revealed the wireless password. The testing team were then able to gain unauthorized access to the internal corporate network, and successfully complete the primary goal of the assessment.

The end result exceeded the expectations of the customer, and they were impressed with the level of detail that had gone into both the testing phase and the analysis and reporting phase. We have now secured a contract to provide them with the remediation required in order to ensure that their information security risk is at an acceptable level, with all possible mitigations in place.