Now, Before jumping to the stages, Let us discuss what is exactly Ethical Hacking, who are hackers and what do they do exactly….
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WHAT IS ETHICAL HACKING
Ethical Hacking is an authorized practice of bypassing system security to identify potential data breaches and threats in a network. This is much more considered legal hacking since it is approved, planned and most importantly is used to check the system defenses, unlike malicious hacking.
WHAT DO ETHICAL HACKERS DO?
Ethical hackers aim to investigate the system or network for weak points that malicious hackers can exploit or destroy. They collect and analyze the information to figure out ways to strengthen the security of the system/network/applications. By doing so, they can improve the security footprint so that it can better withstand attacks or divert them.
5 STAGES OF ETHICAL HACKING
Now yes, we are finally to the point where we discuss the main part of the whole blog, i.e. Stages of Ethical Hacking
SCANNING & ENUMERATION: In this stage, the ethical hacker begins testing the networks and machines to identify potential attack surfaces. This involves gathering information on all machines, users, and services within the network using automated scanning tools. The gathered information is used to identify the vulnerabilities or weak points in system security and tries to exploit in system gaining phase.
RECONNAISSANCE: Reconnaissance is a preparatory phase where the hacker documents the organization’s request, finds valuable configuration and login information of the system and probes the networks. It is during this phase that the hacker finds valuable information such as old passwords, names of important employees.
GAINING ACCESS: The third phase involves attempting to send a malicious payload to the application through the network, an adjacent subnetwork, or physically using a connected computer. Hackers typically use a number of hacking tools and techniques to simulate attempted unauthorized access, including:
- Buffer overflows
- Phishing
- Injection attacks
MAINTAINING ACCESS: Once a hacker has gained access, they want to keep that access for future exploitation and attacks. Also, the hacker secures access to the organization’s Rootkits and Trojans and uses it to launch additional attacks on the network. An ethical hacker tries to maintain the access to the target until he finishes the tasks he planned to accomplish in that target.
CLEARING ATTACK: An intelligent hacker always clears all evidence so that in the later point of time, no one will find any traces leading to him/her. He/she does this by:
- Clearing the cache and cookies
- Modifying registry values
- Modifying/corrupting/deleting the values of Logs
- Clearing out Sent emails
- Closing all the open ports
- Uninstalling all applications that he/she be used
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