Leveraging Automation for Penetration Testing and Reporting

Abstract

With the swift rise in the number of connected tools to the internet, it has revolutionized the way we interact, work and communicate with each other. But at the same time, this surge in connectivity has bred a lot of cyber threats, and cybersecurity has become a serious issue for all people, companies, and governments. We live in an era where our reliance on digital infrastructure will continue to increase, and hence maintaining the relevant vulnerability assessments and penetration testing (VAPT) at a constant pace to check for the possible gaps before the hackers can take advantage of it has become inevitable .

Current VAPT tools and techniques are often time-consuming and require a lot of manual processes and often require a high level of expertise. Some tools partially automate the VAPT process, but they deal only with partial automation of an isolated term in the VAPT process, such as vulnerability detection or exploitation, without other critical terms of the process being automated and dependent on the human input. Furthermore, these tools often lack comprehensive reporting capabilities, which means it is difficult to understand and capitalize on results.

An ideal solution should be able to automate the whole penetration testing cycle from reconnaissance till post exploitation to a point to generate comprehensive, well formatted and actionable report. Such a tool would cut the time and effort necessary to do good penetrations test down drastically, and it would decrease the special knowledge needed.

The challenge in an automated penetration testing tool addressed in this thesis. In the initial phase, the proposed solution integrates automated reconnaissance methods, vulnerability scanning as well as exploitation mechanisms, whereas the advanced reporting module forms part of the next phase. It ensures streamlined and efficient penetration testing with clear and insightful results.