Understanding our objectives

We have three goals for this chapter, as follows:

• Gain access to the target: Identify the target, understanding the services available and which ports are open. Also, understand the user accounts that may be on the machine and, possibly, some vulnerabilities.
• Maintain access: Nothing's worse than getting into a machine only to be kicked out later because someone has made it more difficult for us to get in a second time.
• Covering your tracks: If you love watching animal or nature documentaries, as I do, you know dogs are genetically related to wolves, which explains why they have a lot in common. They particularly share one disgusting habit—eating their feces to cover their tracks, because their feces would announce their presence to other predators or prey in the area. As with wolves and dogs, we need to cover our tracks. If we don't, people will see that we're in the system. They will reimage the system or take it...