What are the Five Steps of Ethical Hacking
As technology continues to become more important to businesses around the world, it is becoming increasingly important to protect business-critical applications and the technology stack that underpins them. Utilizing automated tools to identify vulnerabilities in real time is frequently impractical due to the shifting threat landscape. Ethical hacking has been steadily gaining popularity as a means of assisting in this endeavor due to its effectiveness in simulating actual attacks and locating holes.
How does ethical hacking work?
An assortment of procedures are involved in ethical hacking, in which organizations grant individuals permission to exploit a system's vulnerabilities in order to gain a deeper understanding of their current security posture. A security professional or researcher performs an ethical hack by imitating the tactics and actions of a malicious hacker. Before hackers can take advantage of security vulnerabilities, this aids development and security teams in identifying them.
A crucial step in determining whether a company's security strategy is working is ethical hacking, also known as white hat hacking. White hat hackers adhere to four fundamental principles in order to distinguish themselves from malicious hackers:
Predefining the scope of the attack so that the security assessments stay within the approved legal boundaries Reporting all discovered vulnerabilities and providing remediation recommendations to the organization administering the system Agreeing to the set terms and conditions regarding respect for data privacy and confidentiality The goal of ethical hacking is to mimic the actions of hackers and identify both existing and potential vulnerabilities that may arise in the future. Keeping the exploits legal by obtaining client approval before conducting the vulnerability assessment. An ethical hacker goes through multiple stages of evaluation to get as much in-depth knowledge of the system as possible in order to accomplish this.
What stages go into ethical hacking?
It takes a lot of time and patience to find and use system vulnerabilities to their full potential. The ethical hacker conducting a typical penetration test must first circumvent authorization and authentication mechanisms before searching the network for potential data breaches and threats to network security. An ethical hack should be carefully planned in light of the shifting threat landscape, as a real-world black hat hacker continually invents new ways to exploit vulnerabilities.
Ethical Hacking Classes in Pune can help students increase their chances of passing the CEH exam. The course was designed by experts in the field to ensure that students comprehend the fundamental ethical principles of hacking. Enrolling in an Ethical Hacking Course in Pune can teach you about hackers' methods.
To discover these vulnerabilities, ethical hackers follow a number of ethical hacking methodology steps. The following are the hacking steps: Observation, Scan, Getting Access, Keeping Access, and Clearing the Track Although not all hackers carry out these steps in the same order, they provide a methodical approach that is more effective. Let's examine these hack phases in greater detail.
1. Reconnaissance
When discussing penetration testing, the first obvious inquiry is, "What is the first hacking phase?"
Hackers leave footprints on the system and gather as much information as they can before beginning any penetration tests. The hacker's reconnaissance phase involves documenting the organization's request, locating valuable system configuration and login information, and probing the networks. The following information is essential for carrying out the attacks:
Name conventions, network services, servers handling network workloads, IP addresses, user names, and login credentials, and the target machine's physical location are all included.
2. Scanning
The ethical hacker begins testing the machines and networks at this point to find potential attack surfaces. Using automated scanning tools, this entails gathering data on all network machines, users, and services. There are typically three types of scans used in penetration testing
Network Mapping
This involves locating the host network's topology, which includes servers, routers, firewalls, and host information. White hat hackers can visualize and plan the next steps of the ethical hacking process once it has been mapped.
Automated tools are used by ethical hackers to scan the network for open ports. As a result, it is an effective method for listing live systems and services in a network and determining how to connect them.
Vulnerability scanning is the process of using automated tools to find flaws that could be used to plan attacks.
While a variety of tools are available, the following are some popular ethical hacking tools that are frequently utilized during the scanning phase:
Ping sweeps, network mappers, and vulnerability scanners are all SNMP sweepers.
3. Gaining Access
Following the first and second hacking phases of the process, ethical hackers attempt to exploit vulnerabilities for administrative access. Attempting to physically send a malicious payload to the application via the network, a nearby subnetwork, or a connected computer is the third phase. To simulate attempts at unauthorized access, hackers typically employ a variety of hacking tools and methods, including:
XML external entity processing Using components with known vulnerabilities Buffer overflows Phishing Injection attacks Using components with known vulnerabilities If the attacks are successful, the hacker has control of the entire system or a portion of it and can simulate additional attacks like data breaches and Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS).
4. Maintaining Access
In the fourth stage of the ethical hacking process, procedures are implemented to guarantee that the hacker can continue to use the application. A white-hat hacker constantly looks for new vulnerabilities in the system and increases privileges to see how much control an attacker can have once they are granted security clearance. By removing evidence of an attack and installing a backdoor for future access, some attackers may also attempt to conceal their identity.
5. Clearing Traces
Hackers carry out actions that completely eliminate all traces of their malicious behavior in order to steer clear of any evidence that might point back to it. These are some:
Modifying registry values, uninstalling scripts and applications used in attacks, clearing logs, and deleting folders created during an attack are all methods used by hackers to conceal their identity and maintain unnoticed access.
Tunneling Stenography After successfully completing all five steps of ethical hacking, the ethical hacker then documents a report on the vulnerabilities and offers suggestions for how to fix them.
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