Tag Archives: testing

kubestr header

Kubestr – Open-Source Kubernetes Storage benchmarking tool

Kubernetes, , , , ,

Kubernetes is a platform which is starting to lose the need for introduction in most settings. However, it still can be a complex beast to get to grips with, and getting your infrastructure components configured correctly is key to providing a successful Kubernetes environment for your applications.

One of these such areas is storage.

With your Kubernetes platform, you need to ensure a correct storage configuration, and benchmark your storage performance, like you would with any other platform. Then test the container storage features such as snapshots of the persistent volumes.

The configuration for each vendor when integrating with Kubernetes will be different, but the outcomes should be the same.

What is Kubestr?

Enter Kubestr, the Open-Source project tool from Kasten by Veeam, designed to help with ensuring your storage is configured correctly, help you benchmark the performance and test features such as snapshots.

Getting started with Kubestr

Simply Download Kubestr for the platform you wish to run the tool from. For me I’ll be running it from my Mac OS X machine, which has connectivity to my Kubernetes platform (AWS EKS, I used this blog to create it).

I extracted the zip file and have the Kubestr command line tool available in the output folder.

kubestr download and extract

Running the tool for the first time will run some tests and output a number of useful items of information on how we can use the tool. Which I will start to breakdown as we continue.

For Kubestr to run, it will use the active context in your kubectl configuration file.

kubestr first run

Green Box – we have our initial checks.

  • Kubernetes version
  • RBAC check
  • Kubernetes Aggregated layer check

Then we have the details from our available storage provisioners that are installed for our cluster. You can see what I have two installed. Continue reading Kubestr – Open-Source Kubernetes Storage benchmarking tool →

Veeam new logo featured image

Building a Veeam Lab – Testing Scenarios

Veeam, , , , , , , ,

In my previous post, I looked at the architecture you may want to implement to test the various features of Veeam Backup and Replication, including features from v10.

I thought it would be a good idea to break down the architecture into sections, and provide some ideas of what features/configurations can be tested in each section. This of course is not an exhaustive list.

I’ve broken down the original diagram into 5 Sections.

Veeam Lab Architecture in Sections

Section 1 – VMware Cluster Continue reading Building a Veeam Lab – Testing Scenarios →

pentest left1

Notes from the field – Penetration tests

General, Networking, Windows, , , , ,

This blog post is by no means a comprehensive guide from an expert in the cyber security area. However my previous role meant I had the pleasure of reviewing a number of customer penetration tests and from this, pretty much all of them were all exploited in the same way. So I put together some basic information for any of my customers to review and think about before they had a penetration booked.

After all, might as well make it a challenge for the people you are hiring to hack your network 😉

Methodology

Ok, so I’m only going to cover the basics, as there are far better articles out there on this.

  • Reconnaissance
    • Information gathering before attending the targets site
      • IP addresses of websites and MX record details
      • Details of email addresses (shared mailboxes, employees direct)
      • Social networks (details shared on LinkedIn by Employees, the companies twitter posts etc)
        • Consider the below twitter post by a company, what information can you glean from seeing a picture of their racks and other equipment.
        • If we know the company name, we can enumerate the various domain names they own to public IP addresses, and just plug that into a website like http://shodan.io and maybe look for that Sonicwall and find out if its running the latest firmware.
        • Below when zooming in on the image, we can find details of an ADSL line
        • twitter post edited
      • Job websites; are they hiring, especially in IT, what skills do they want? Looking for an engineer that knows a particular accountancy package?
  • Enumeration/Identification
    • Assessment of devices found and the search for vulnerabilities
      • Tools in use such as, but not limited to; nmap, Nessus, Metasploit, unicornscan, nikto, dotdotpwn, gobuster.
  • Exploitation
    • Create a plan of action/attack based on the information gathered.
    • Perform the attack/exploitation itself to achieve the end goal, usually access to systems from zero, escalation with the end goal being access to private/sensitive/restricted systems and data.
    • Tools in use such as, but not limited to; Kali Linux (OS and contains a lot of tooling), Nmap, Metasploit, BurpSuite, SQLMap, padbuster, custom exploit scripts
Common exploits to gain access

Ok so first, lets review how multiple networks were exploited or hacked.

Below is the common summary of issues found at many sites I reviewed, and this is what I will cover in this blog post ;

  • Null session authentication on Domain Controllers
  • Devices configured to use NBT-NS / LLMNR
  • SMB Signing
  • NTLMv1 in use for network authentication
  • Domain Users have Local Admin permissions to their machines
  • Poor password policy
  • No split accounts for Domain Admins
  • Poor patching on systems
Null Session Authentication

By default null sessions (unauthenticated) are enabled on Windows 2000 & 2003 servers. Therefore anyone can use these NULL connections to enumerate potentially sensitive information from the servers, read this as information from your Active Directory.

Therefore anyone with a legacy domain which has been upgraded through the years, will find that Null Session Authentication is enabled on their environments.

Seeing it in action Continue reading Notes from the field – Penetration tests →