Black Hat USA 2014: Pentesting? Thought You'd Never Ask

The call for papers just closed on April 4, and both the show itself and its many Training sessions are open for signups. We're still in the early-bird period, so confirm your plans now to save a bundle. To kick off the hype, here are three Training highlights from the ever-popular pentesting arena.

Theory has its place, but when it comes to learning penetration testing, practice and real-world applications are indispensable. That's the thinking behind Veris Group's Adaptive Penetration Testing, in which you'll spend most of your time immersed in solving real-world pentesting problems in a fully operational lab environment that includes the powerful Cobalt Strike testing suite. If you want to hit the ground running, this might be the Training to beat.

Pentesting isn't getting any easier; new security technologies, hardening techniques, and detection routines demand ever more advanced tricks to circumvent. Join David "ReL1K" Kennedy, the author of the Social-Engineer Toolkit, for Bypassing Security Defenses - Secret Penetration Testing Techniques, which will teach you the advanced techniques needed to keep up in the arms race. A focus on attack avenues, tricks of the trade, and open-source tools will give you a strong foundation. By the end of the Training, you'll be writing your own tools and exploits in Python.

Two words to describe Penetration Testing with Kali Linux? Practical and intensive. Offensive Security, the creator of Kali Linux, not only wants to walk you through the basics and more hard-core security scenarios. It wants to instill the lateral thinking needed to solve real-world pentesting problems. You'll not only use the tools, but you'll also understand the mechanisms and technologies that allow them to work. Specific topics include bash scripting, fuzzing, reverse tunneling and infiltration, and much, much more. (We're already sweating.)

[UPDATE: Penetration Testing with Kali Linux is now sold out. If you are interested in any of the Black Hat Trainings, we recommend you reserve your spot soon.]

Ready to register? That's great, because you'll lock in those sweet, sweet early-bird rates. Please visit Black Hat USA 2014's registration page to get started.