Infection Monkey – Network penetration testing

Infection Monkey is a free open-source, network penetration testing tool. It is a breach and attack simulator that uses real-world attack techniques and known vulnerabilities.

Evaluating your security is easy with Infection Monkey and takes 3 simple steps:

Step 1 – Simulate
Download and run Infection monkey from a machine. Installation is simple, to download Infection Monkey please complete the download request form located: https://www.guardicore.com/infectionmonkey/

The download link is then emailed to you. Once downloaded, run the installation.
Note: Depending on your Anti-Virus solution, you may need to disable it in order to run Infection Monkey. Dissapointily during my Tests, Windows Defender was oblivious to Infection Moneky and didn’t detect or stop any of the exploits on the local machine I was running it from.

Once installed open Infection Monkey and review the configuration. A key area is to add your internal IP Range which is located under Configuration > Network.

Now that Infection Monkey is configured and installed, you can run it from the Machine it is installed on by selecting “From Island”.

Run Infection Monkey

Step 2 – Evaluate
Watch as Infection Monkey runs and tests your network for any weakness. While it is running, Infection monkey will start to draw out a diagram detailing its “Victims” and whether it was able to exploit the victim.

Infection Monkey, Infection Map

Step 3 – Remediate
Act on the reports that Infection Monkey provides you with. If Infection Monkey reports that it wasn’t able to carry out any known exploits. You can use the information and its recommendations it provides to secure your network further. For example, you may want to consider segregating your network into separate VLANs or implementing an isolated guest network.

Using infection monkey correctly and on a regular basis can assist in securing your network. From my experience using Infection Monkey, I have found it works best by trying different scenarios. For example, Connected to a Guest network to simulate a visitors device that is infected and to confirm that the Guest network is correctly isolated.

Hopefully, you have found this to be a useful tool, I have only just scratched the surface explaining Infection Monkey. If you would like to know more please visit the official documentation: https://www.guardicore.com/infectionmonkey/docs/