Ethical Hacking For Beginners (Chapter-3)

Steps used in Ethical Hacking:-

There are mainly 5 steps in ethical hacking/ cyber security.

1. Reconnaissance

2. Scanning

3. Gaining Access

4. Maintaining Access

5. Clearing Track

1. Reconnaissance:- 

The process of collecting information about your defined target in depth is known as reconnaissance. Attackers perform this step before diving into any hacking attack. It’s basically a data collection procedure for the targeted victim. It contains several smaller steps also that are:-

• Footprint:- Gathering data about the target system. It mostly scans the OS, firewall, IP address, Server details, ISP/ VPN details of the target system.

• Enumeration:- This is the substep of reconnaissance where the attacker tries to find out the victim’s Name, System’s name( for future attack mostly social engineering attacks.

• Scanning:- The most important step is to find all the machines/ servers in a network/ framework (mostly in LAN mode) associated with a networking device (router) and scan it's an open port for performing an attack to compromise a group of systems or an organization.

2. Scanning:- 

The second step after defining and doing background research about the target victim/ system/ organization.

There are a few types of scanning attempts attackers do they are mostly:-

• Network Scan:- Scanning of victim’s computer’s Open ports, IP address, the running process in that system, OS details, system configuration etc.

• Port Scan:- It’s similar to finding the backdoor of the victim’s system by using which attacker will gain access later. It include TCP/UDP port scans also

• Vulnerability Scan:- FInding the weakness of the victim's system. Now weakness depends upon various factors. The most common weakness(Vulnerability) is OS vulnerability(outdated OS) and Network vulnerability(Unencrypted network/ using public network/Wifi). And some others are not using firewalls, using unauthenticated software/ keygen which mostly contains malware.

3. Gaining Access:- 

Now comes the actual step. Gaining access to the victim's system. There are several methods available for gaining access. Most common are:-

• Password cracking:- most common password cracking methods are brute force, dictionary attack, rainbow table attack, phishing, social engineering, malware attack.

• Unsecured Network:- If the victim using a network which don’t have any encryption, or using any public network,

• Spyware:- Most common method, sending spyware through email, any software or through any communication medium to the victim's system and gaining access to that system through that spyware. (mostly trojan)

• Session Hijacking/ Man in the middle:- This attack is performed using session cookie hijacking from the victim’s browser or through getting access to the victim's unprotected network. And in this case, the attacker silently captures the in/outbound data transmitting from the victim's system.

• Phishing attack:- In this case victim is being tricked by the attacker to enter his/her credentials to a fake website/ system without identifying that fake system. Most attackers send a fake link through mail/ other communication medium pretending to be a legitimate authority.

• Data Breach:- Nowadays it is the most common way of getting the victim of cyber fraud. And it’s out of the end user’s control. Most attackers target the big companies’ user database and find out user information, id card, email id, location, and in fact credit card details too.

To avoid this type of attack users are always warned to change their credentials at least once in a month(basically password/ security pin). And never share any sensitive information through phone or mail without being sure that the person on the other side of the phone/ mail is 100% legitimate.

4. Maintaining access:-

The step is when an attacker tries to maintain the access/ ownership which he gained over the victim’s machine. For this step, they use the backdoor, rootkit, rat, trojans, etc. And they try to upload sensitive data from the victim’s pc to their server or system. (which they use at a later point of time for blackmailing/ threatening the victim) And after that in some cases, they lock(Encrypt) the victim’s PC and ask for ransom (bribe) to unlock the PC(Ransomware attack). And mostly they just take the ransom and fly away.

5. Clearing Track:- 

After performing a successful attack the attacker clears all the evidence of that attack so that cyber forensic experts can’t trace back them or can’t take any legal action. In this step attackers mostly clear all the log files from the victim's PC as well as their own PC too, Clears up all connections which they established, destroy all the payloads, rootkits, rats, trojans, etc. And in some cases, they also destroy their systems too after backing up all the data from it so that nobody can’t trace it back them.

In the next chapter, we will discuss Linux. So stay tuned and Happy Learning!.