The term “Hacker” refers to professionals who redeveloped mainframe systems, boosting their productivity and enabling multitasking. Nowadays, the phrase is frequently used to refer to skilled hackers who, driven by malice or mischief, exploit loopholes or use defects to obtain unauthorised access to computer systems. For instance, hackers can develop algorithms to break networks, access passwords, or even impair network functions.
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The main motivation behind malicious or unethical hacking is obtaining valuable data or achieving financial benefit. But not all hacking is harmful. The second kind of hacking is ethical hacking, which brings us back to its roots. Why do we need ethical hacking, and what is it? You will discover everything there is to know about the five main phases of ethical hacking.
In this blog, we shall discuss types of ethical hacking and phases of ethical hacking.
Why ethical hacking gained popularity
As technology becomes important for businesses worldwide, the importance of protecting applications and the underlying tech stack grows. Due to the constantly changing threat landscape, employing exclusively automated tools to detect vulnerabilities in real-time is typically challenging. As Ethical hacking is gaining popularity in the technological world, it helps simulate legitimate attacks and identify weaknesses.
What is ethical hacking?
Businesses permit individuals to use a system’s weaknesses through various techniques known as ethical hacking. Moreover, hacking aims to understand their existing system security better.
A security expert or analyst imitates the behaviours and tactics of a malicious hacker when undertaking an ethical hack. This enables development and security teams to find security problems before hackers take advantage of them.
A key step in evaluating a company’s security effectiveness is called ethical hacking, often known as White Hat hacking. White hat hackers use these four tenets to set themselves apart from illegal hackers.
Organizational approval is necessary before conducting the vulnerability assessment.
The attack’s scope is known for security evaluations to remain within the proper legal parameters. Reporting all found flaws and recommending fixes to the group in charge of system administration. Accepting the established guidelines for maintaining the confidentiality and privacy of data
Ethical hacking aims to imitate hackers’ actions and find current and future vulnerabilities. An ethical hacker goes through several evaluation phases to complete this and learn as much as possible about the system.
Types of Ethical Hacking
- Black Hat Hackers: This type of hacker will have advanced knowledge and skills to hack the system or network with malicious intent.
- White Hat Hackers: an individual with the skills in hacking the system or network with the authorization for hacking. This type of hacker is also called a legal hacker.
- Gray Hat Hackers: This type of hacker will have advanced computer and networking skills to help them protect the network or system security.
What are the Phases of Ethical Hacking?
It takes time and perseverance to identify and fully exploit system vulnerabilities. During a normal penetration exam, the ethical hacker must get past authorization and authentication barriers before scanning the network for vulnerabilities to network security and possible data breaches.
Given the changing threat landscape, real-world black hat hackers are constantly developing new ways to exploit vulnerabilities. So ethical hackers should have an in-depth understanding of hacking techniques and skills.
The Five Phases of Ethical Hacking
Reconnaissance
Reconnaissance is the phase of preparation. In this phase, the hackers will collect the target system network’s data before implementing their hacking techniques. In this type of hacking, the hacker will gather valuable information like old passwords, user names, and crucial files of the system or network. In this phase, hackers will find vulnerabilities in the system and perform an active reconnaissance to understand the organization’s functions. The reconnaissance phases also can be mentioned as dumpster diving.
Footprinting is the next primary step hacker utilize. In Footprinting, the hacker will aim to gather security passwords and put less effort into finding the internet protocol addresses and the vulnerability of the target network or system, instead focusing on finding the network map to understand how the network infrastructure works and how to break through it.
Footprinting provides essential details such as the domain name, transmission Control Protocol, User Datagram Protocol, system ID, and passwords.
Many footprinting methods exist, such as imitating a website by duplicating it, researching an organization using search engines, or even impersonating present personnel using their information.
In the Reconnaissance phase, the hacker usually gathers information about three groups,
- Network
- Host
- People involved
There are two types of Footprinting
Active: creating a direct connection with the target to gather more about them using the Nmap tool, for instance, while scanning the target system or network.
Passive: attempting to gather data about the target system without directly accessing it. This entails gathering data from public websites, social media, etc.
Scanning
In this phase, the hacker recognizes a fast way to access the network and peek to gather data. Scanning can be distinguished into three types:
- Pre-attack
- Port scanning/sniffing
- Data extraction.
The hacker will recognize how to exploit the system through the weaknesses in all three scanning phases. In the pre-attack phase, hackers scan the network to gather information based on the data collected during reconnaissance.
In the port scanning phase, the hacker will utilize the port canning tools like:
- TCP Port Scanner.
- Nmap.
- Netcat.
- Port Authority.
- Advanced Port Scanner.
- Network Scanner by MiTeC.
- PortQryUI.
- NetScanTools.
These are the tools used for the port scanner or sniffing phase. Attackers gather details about ports, operating systems, and virtual machines during the information extraction phase before launching an assault.
Three types of scanning are involved
- Port scanning: In this phase, hackers will involve in scanning the target network or the system to collect the data like Active systems, port numbers, and a range of services that are active on the host.
- Vulnerability Scanning: Examining the target for exploitable weaknesses or vulnerabilities. Most often, with the aid of automated tools like:
- Aircrack
- Retina CS Community
- Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer
- Tripwire IP360
- Nexpose Community
- Nikto
- Comodo cWatch Vulnerability Scanner
- Wireshark
- OpenVAS
- Nessus Professional
- Network Mapping: Hackers will try to identify the network’s topology, routers, firewalls, servers and host information, then use that information to create a network diagram. Throughout the hacking process, this map could be a helpful resource.
Gain Access
To control the systems connected, the hacker acquires access to the system, apps, and network and elevates their user privileges.
In this stage, an attacker employs a variety of tools or techniques to gain access to the system or network. After logging in, the hacker must raise his privilege level to the administrator to install the required applications and edit or hide data.
Maintaining Access
In this hacking phase, hackers will just try to demonstrate how vulnerable the system is. Another purpose of this hacking phase is to sustain or maintain a connection in the background without the user’s knowledge.
This can be accomplished using Trojans, rootkits, Fileless Malware, Spyware, Adware, Worms, virus and other malicious software. The objective is to keep him there until he does the tasks he intended to do there.
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Cover Tracks
Once hackers gain access to the target system or network, they try to hide their footprints to escape the security guards. They achieve this by deleting the cache and cookies, altering the log files, and shutting off all open ports. This step is crucial because it cleans up the system’s data, which makes hacking much more difficult to detect.
No thief wants to be apprehended. So, an intelligent hacker always removes all traces of his activity so that no one will be able to identify him in the future. This entails adjusting registry settings, altering Log values, uninstalling all the applications he used, and erasing all the directories he made.
Now that you have understood the five phases of ethical hacking, types of ethical hacking and ethical hacking advantages. We shall discuss the future scope of ethical hacking.
What is The Future of Ethical Hacking?
The future of ethical hacking is boundless. This industry is rapidly increasing across various sectors, including the government, business operations, healthcare, entertainment, and banking. As a result, By 2025, the growing need for ethical hackers will increase by 30%, and the number is expected to rise.
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