Zac Davis chats with fellow SEVN-Xer, Vitaliy Kovalchuk this week on War Stories.
Episode Summary
In Episode 5 of War Stories, host Zac Davis talks with SEVN-X penetration tester Vitaliy Kovalchuk about moving between offensive and defensive security, the tools that keep paying off on internal network penetration tests, and two stories from his career: his first shell and a moment that felt straight out of Mr. Robot.
Vitaliy studied forensics and networking, spent several years in offensive security consulting, then worked three to four years at a managed security provider building SIEM and EDR alerting. That blue team background is a big part of why he is valuable on purple team assessments. He talks through GoWitness for screenshotting web services across a network, and why IPMI, unauthenticated VNC, and default passwords still open doors years later.
His first war story goes back to 2012, when a vulnerability scan turned up a SQL Server with default credentials. The SQL service was running with administrative privileges, which led to a Meterpreter shell, a crash course in Windows token impersonation, and eventually domain admin. The second story starts in a parking lot before business hours on a wireless assessment, where a MouseJack-style wireless keystroke injection attack turned a terminal session into something that looked like a hacking movie.
In This Episode
- Vitaliy Kovalchuk's path through consulting, managed security, and back into penetration testing
- How a blue team background strengthens purple team and red team work
- GoWitness, IPMI, VNC, and the default password problem that never goes away
- Escalating from a default SQL Server password to domain admin with token impersonation
- Wireless keystroke injection during a wireless penetration test
How Far Could an Attacker Get From One Default Password?
SEVN-X runs internal and external penetration tests, red team engagements, and purple team exercises that show how a single weak spot can turn into full domain compromise. Talk with our team about scoping a test for your organization.
