The latest big buzz is Fast-Track released recently at ShmooCon by Securestate, basically Fast-Track is an automated penetration suite for penetration testers.

For those of you new to Fast-Track, Fast-Track is a python based open-source project aimed at helping Penetration Testers in an effort to identify, exploit, and further penetrate a network. Fast-Track was originally conceived when David Kennedy was on a penetration test and found that there was generally a lack of tools or automation in certain attacks that were normally extremely advanced and time consuming.

In an effort to reproduce some of David’s advanced attacks and propagate it down to the team at SecureState, David ended up writing Fast-Track for the public. Many of the issues Fast-Track exploits are due to improper sanitizing of client-side data within web applications, patch management, or lack of hardening techniques. All of these are relatively simple to fix if you know what to look for, but as penetration testers are extremely common findings for us.

Fast-Track arms the penetration tester with advanced attacks that in most cases have never been performed before. Sit back relax, crank open a can of jolt cola and enjoy the ride.

It’s something a lot of people will enjoy as many parts of a pen-test are very monotonous and don’t really take your full concentration, a semi-automated approach with a skillful eye watching for false-positives and false-negatives is always more effective and efficient than fully manual or fully automated testing.

Dependencies – Metasploit 3, SQLite, PYMSSQL, FreeTDS, Pexpect, ClientForms, Beautiful Soup, and Psycho.

Installation – When extracting the tarball, run the setup.py file by executing python setup.py install, this will install the needed dependencies MINUS SQLite and Metasploit 3, you should specify the metasploit path or it will default to the BackTrack 3 installation menu. Once the installation is completed, Fast-Track should be fully functional.

You can download Fast-Track 4.0 here:

fasttrack.tgz

Or read more here.

This is not exactly new news either, these kind of toolkits have been on sale for a long time, virus generators, trojan toolkits, now they are getting more polished, more stream-lined, more expensive and more easily available.

News of them is hitting the mainstream media..

Malicious hackers are producing easy to use tools that automate attacks to cash in on a boom in hi-tech crime.

On sale, say security experts, are everything from individual viruses to comprehensive kits that let budding cyber thieves craft their own attacks.

The top hacking tools are being offered for prices ranging up to £500.

Some of the most expensive tools are sold with 12 months of technical support that ensures they stay armed with the latest vulnerabilities.

Hacking tools with support packages! Now that’s something new.

According to Mr Henry there were more than 68,000 downloadable hacking tools in circulation. The majority were free to use and took some skill to operate but a growing number were offered for sale to those without the technical knowledge to run their own attacks, he said.

But, he added, many hacking groups were offering tools such as Mpack, Shark 2, Nuclear, WebAttacker, and IcePack that made it much easier for unskilled people to get in to the hi-tech crime game.

Mr Henry said the tools were proving useful because so many vulnerabilities were being discovered and were taking so long to be patched.

Mentions of Mpack always pops up, but now there’s a plethora of competitors.

The landscape is getting interesting, time for companies to invest more in their I.T. budgets I think. Especially when it comes to education and awareness.

Source: BBC