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PART – 5: ETHICAL HACKING

Ethical Hacking
• Hacking is the process of identifying and exploiting weakness in a system
or a network to gain unauthorized access to data and system resources.
• Ethical Hacking sometimes called as Penetration Testing is an authorized
practice of bypassing system security to identify weak points that
malicious hackers can exploit or destroy.
Important terms in hacking
a. Threat: Anything that has potential to cause harm. There are various
threats like Virus, Worm, Adware, Ransomware, etc.
b. Vulnerability: A weakness or a flaw in the system which an attacker may
find and exploit for e.g. Outdated security features, Weak authentication
mechanism, substandard backup and recovery etc.
 c. Attack: A security attack is an unauthorized attempt to steal, damage, or
expose data from an information system.
d. Attack vectors: Path or means by an attacker gains access to an
information system to perform malicious activities for e.g. email
attachments, pop-up windows, Web pages etc.
Phases of Hacking
1. Reconnaissance: It is also called as Footprinting or Information
Gathering Phase. There are two types of Footprinting:
a. Active: Directly interacting with the target to gather information
about the target for e.g. Using Nmap tool to scan the target.
b. Passive: Collect information about the target without directly
accessing the target i.e. from social media, public websites.
2. Scanning: Three types of scanning are involved:
a. Port scanning: This phase involves scanning the target for the
information like open ports, Live systems, various services running on
the host.
b. Vulnerability Scanning: Checking the target for weaknesses or
vulnerabilities which can be exploited. Usually done with help of
automated tools.
c. Network Mapping: Finding the topology of network, routers,
firewalls servers if any, and host information and drawing a network
diagram with the available information.
3. Gaining Access: This phase is where an attacker breaks into the
system/network using various tools or methods. After entering into a
system, he has to increase his privilege to administrator level so he
can install an application he needs or modify data or hide data.
4. Maintaining Access: Hacker may want to maintain or persist the
connection in the background without the knowledge of the user.
This can be done using Trojans, Rootkits or other malicious files. The
aim is to maintain the access to the target until he finishes the tasks
he planned to accomplish in that target.
5. Clearing Track: An intelligent hacker always clears all evidence so that
in the later point of time, no one will find any traces leading to him.
This involves modifying/corrupting/deleting the values of Logs,
modifying registry values and uninstalling all applications he used and
deleting all folders he created.
Types of Hackers
• Black-hat Hackers are also known as an Unethical Hacker or a Security Cracker.
These people hack the system illegally to steal money or to achieve their own
illegal goals. Black Hat hacking is always illegal.
• White Hat hackers are also known as Ethical Hackers. They never intent to harm
a system, rather they try to find out weaknesses in a computer or a network
system as a part of penetration testing and vulnerability assessments. Ethical
hacking is legal.
• Grey hat hackers are a blend of both black hat and white hat hackers. They act
without malicious intent but for their fun, they exploit a security weakness in a
computer system or network without the owner’s permission or knowledge.
Types of Penetration Testing
• Black box: The penetration tester will not be given any details
pertaining to the network, or infrastructure of the network/
organization.
• Grey box: The penetration tester typically has some knowledge of a
network’s internals, potentially including design and architecture
documentation and an account internal to the network.
• White Box: The penetration tester is provided with whole range of
information about the systems and/or network such as Schema,
Source code, OS details, IP address, etc.
Common Hacking Techniques
1. Bait and Switch: Using bait and switch hacking technique, an attacker
can buy advertising spaces on the websites. Later, when a user clicks
on the ad, he might get directed to a page that’s infected with
malware.
2. Cookie Theft: The cookies in our browser store personal data such as
browsing history, username, and passwords for different sites we
access. Once the hacker gets the access to your cookie, he can even
authenticate himself as you on a browser.
3. DoS/DDoS: A Denial of Service attack is a hacking technique of taking
down a site or server by flooding that site or server with a huge
amount of traffic so that the server is unable to process all the
requests in real-time and finally crashes down.
Common Hacking Techniques (contd.)
4. Eavesdropping: A passive technique used by hackers to listen in on a
network connection and observe and record as much high-value
information as possible.
5. Phishing: An attacker masquerades as a reputable entity or person in
email or other forms of communication. Attackers will commonly use
phishing emails to distribute malicious links or attachments that can
perform a variety of functions.
6. Fake WAP: Setting up a fake wireless access point (WAP) is a great way
for hackers to gain a captive audience whose data streams can be
monitored, intercepted, or hijacked for various purposes.
Common Hacking Techniques (contd.)
7. Waterhole attack: Setting up a bogus but attractive website to
assemble a herd of unwitting victims in one place – where you can
harvest data, or spread a malware infection to the maximum number
of recipients.
8. Keylogging: Using keylogger software to record the key sequence and
strokes of your keyboard into a log file on your machine. These log
files might even contain your personal email IDs and passwords.
9. Malware: The attacker uses a virus, Trojan and other malicious code
and installs them on the victim’s computer to get unprivileged access.
These softwares keep sending data to the hacker regularly and can
also perform various tasks on victim’s system like sniffing your data
and diverting traffic etc.
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