I would recommend against such amateur penetration test. It is not a good idea from legal point of view and might have an impact on network because when used improperly, "hacking tooling" can be accidentally used to conduct Denial of Service.
Discussion
I am fully aware of that, and most definitively not a novice.
But the last time I dealt with this in a proper, non-theoretical way, was when Metasploit Framework was "the thing to use" - which it really isn't anymore, as far as I can tell.
So, I want to seek the proper alternatives. I have untill thursday to learn them, which is enough time to cover the basics, and probably more than enough for what I need.
This class assignment is rather basic, but I do want to deliver something - so, this is a great opportunity to learn those tools! ^^
I didn't meant to offend you, it seems I incorrectly assumed that it is the task for your students to try to breach the school network.
As for Metasploit alternative and "Kali/ParrotOS + nmap being a no-brainer" - I think you are messing different stages of an attack as per cyberkill chain framework. There are a lot of scripts and tooling available and they are developed to solve some specific task well.
Metasploit is mostly used for a weaponization and exploitation stages. And personally I see nothing wrong with using it to demostrate a basic attack.
I don't think there are good open-source drop-in replacements for it, but I consider demonstration of a specific vulnerability exploitation manually is a good option, but I am not sure if your goal is to cover some technical aspects of red team or something else.
All good! But you were half-right; I am the student, and it is indeed my task. =) And mine alone, since I am the only blind student in the class - its the alternative to the "physical hacking", if you will.
> Metasploit is mostly used for a weaponization and exploitation stages
Duely noted! That is what I had known about it too. But, as said, it's been a good while since I last put my eyeballs on it. Last time I had brought it up - here on Nostr, no less - I was told that it was "outdated". o.o
The stated goal of this assignment is to:
- Find any kind of data that a mere student shouldn't be able to find.
Granted, I _am_ allowed to utilize the full arsenal of my knowledge in Linux, networking and therein. So the goal given to me in particular is to:
- Find any kind of attack vector that would allow exfiltration of data that I shouldn't be able to get.
The class is about stuff like the GDPR and friends - and since the handling of private/sensitive data also includes securing it, this is where I come in to play. Simply said, I am supposed to pentest our school and see how much damage I can do by just hooking up my laptop to their LAN.
Assume this rather generic scenario: Dude walks in and masquerades as a student, plugs into a LAN outlet (theres more than enough of those around) and starts to "do stuff". I am supposed to do that stuff, and this is why I am looking into prepping.
Thank you for the pointers and insights, I will keep those in mind! :)
If you've got more, I'd be more than happy to have'em =)