Converting Android Operating System into Penetration Testing Device

Android operating system developed by Google, based on a modified version of the Linux kernel and other open source software and designed primarily for touchscreen mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets.

Big corporations trying to improve the user experience by making everything around simplify, increasing performance and connections with “IoT’s”. Today with the Android operating system installed on the most robust smartphones, we have their strengths and weaknesses.

A Linux system, have their limitations and permissions. The user that makes the “Root” on the mobile device, will have full access to the system from view, edit and delete files and folders from the Android Operating System and even install tools of various features.

Preparing Android Smartphone for Penetration Testing

Once the application installs, we will have to do the “Root” mode to have full access to the Android system. Therefore, we can install the pentest and monitoring tools.

Apt-get is a powerful package management system that is used to work with Ubuntu’s APT (Advanced Packaging Tool) library to perform the installation of new software packages, removing existing software packages, upgrading of existing software packages.

First, we will use Linux repositories distributions for pentest, in this example, I am using the Kali Linux distro. Once we do the “apt-get update” command, we will have reliable fonts tools.

Tools that we Get after Updating List

NMAP: Security Scanner, Port Scanner, & Network Exploration Tool.
Bettercap: Powerful tool to perform MITM Attacks
Setoolkit: Allows to perform many Social Engineering Activities.

NMAP

Command # nmap 192.168.0.0/24

With NMAP installed, we have several ways to scan the network and test some services that are on servers.

At this simple lab, we performed a network scan and identified two network assets (but without any vulnerable service to attack).

Bettercap

Insert Command # bettercap –sniffer

We got the login credentials at access router.

In addition to HTTP, we also obtain the HTTPS but will not be covered in this article.

With the weakest link of information security being the USER, he will always be subject to attacks and even without realizing that the Web Site digital certificate will be changed to that of the attacker doing the MITM attack.

Setoolkit

Insert Command Insert Command # service apache2 start && /usr/share/setoolkit/setoolkit

We validate that the apache service is working correctly. As soon as we change the test page from apache and leave the fake Google page for this test, we will insert the email and password to make sure that the attack works.