Offensive Security Services
The tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs) that Tech4UK’s professionals use are the same ones that threat actors utilize. By using these TTPs, our professionals can root out the potential vulnerabilities that real hackers might use while testing existing security programs.
Our main offensive security tactics include
Vulnerability scanning
Vulnerability scanning is an automated process for detecting vulnerabilities in an organization’s IT assets. It involves using a specialized tool to scan computer systems for vulnerabilities.
Our vulnerability scanners can search assets for known vulnerabilities associated with specific software versions. They can also perform more active tests, like seeing how apps respond to common SQL injection strings or other malicious inputs.
Hackers often use vulnerability scans to identify vulnerabilities they can exploit during an attack. In turn, our OffSec experts use the same vulnerability scanners to find and close these vulnerabilities before hackers can seize them. This proactive approach allows our clients to stay ahead of threats and strengthen their defenses.
Penetration testing
Penetration testing, or “pen testing,” is the use of mock cyberattacks to find vulnerabilities in computer systems. Essentially, our pen testers act as human vulnerability scanners, searching for network flaws by mimicking real hackers. Our team adopts an attacker’s perspective, which in turn allows them to effectively pinpoint the vulnerabilities that malicious actors are most likely to target.
Because our human security experts carry out pen tests, they can detect vulnerabilities that fully automated tools might miss and are less likely to turn up false positives. If they can exploit a flaw, so can cybercriminals.
Red teaming
Red teaming, also known as “adversarial simulation,” is an exercise in which our group of experts use the TTPs of real-world cybercriminals to launch a simulated attack against a computer system.
Unlike pen tests, red teaming is an adversarial security assessment. The red team actively exploits attack vectors, without causing real damage, to see how far they can go. The red team also faces off against a blue team of security engineers who aim to stop them. This gives our clients a chance to test its hands-on incident response procedures.
To test both technical defenses and employee awareness, red team operations uses a range of tactics. Common red team methods include mock ransomware attacks, phishing and other social engineering simulations and even on-site breach techniques like tailgating. Our red teams conduct different types of tests depending on the amount of information they have.
-
White-box test
In a white-box test, the red team has full transparency into the target system’s internal structure and source code.
-
Black-box test
In a black-box test, the red team has no information about the system and must break in from the outside, much like real-world hackers.
-
Gray-box test
In a gray-box test, the red team have some basic knowledge of the target system, like IP ranges for network devices, but not much else.