WHAT IS ETHICAL HACKING:TYPES OF HACKERS:TYPES OF HACKING:RECONNAISSANCE

INTRODUCTION

 

The term hacking has been around for quite a long time now the first recorded instance of hacking dates back to the early 1960s in MIT where both the terms hacking and hackers coined since then hacking has evolved into a broadly followed discipline for the computing community.

 

WHAT IS ETHICAL HACKING ?

 

So hacking is the process of finding vulnerabilities in a system and using these found vulnerabilities to gain unauthorized access into the system to perform malicious activities ranging from deleting system files or stealing sensitive information hacking is illegal and can lead to extreme consequences if you're caught in the act people have been sentenced to years and years of imprisonment because of hacking ,nonetheless hacking can be legal if done with permission computer experts are often hired by companies to hack into their systems to find out vulnerabilities and weak end points so that they can be fixed this is done as a precautionary measure against legitimate hackers who have malicious intents such people who hack into a system with permission without any malicious intent are known as ethical hackers and the process is known as ethical hacking so now that we know exactly what ethical hacking is and who ethical hackers are let's go over.

 

TYPES OF HACKERS

 

1)WHITE HAT HACKERS

White hat hackers is another name for an ethical hacker they hack into a system with prior permission to find out vulnerabilities ,so that they can be fixed before a person which malicious intents finds them and does his job with it ,after that we have

 

2)BLACK HAT HACKERS

Now black hat hackers also known as crackers are those who hack in order to gain unauthorized access to a system and harm its operations or steal sensitive information ,black hat hacking is illegal and has always been illegal , because of it's malicious intent which includes stealing corporate data violating privacy damaging the system blocking network communications and much more.

 

3)GREY HAT HACKERS

Now grey hat hackers are a blend of both black hat and white hat hackers they act without malicious intent but for their own fun they exploit security weakness in a computer system or network without the owner's permission or knowledge ,their intent is to bring the weakness, the attention of the owners and getting appreciation in form of a little bounty from the owners ,now last but not the least.

 

4) SUICIDE HACKER

A suicide hacker is a person who works with the intent to bring down major corporations and infrastructure these kinds of hackers are not scared of the consequences of their actions as they mostly work with vengeance in their mind these people are also called “Hacktivists” because they mostly utilize the technology to announce a social ideological reform or some religious reform or a political message and general most hacktivism involves website deaf games or denial of service.

 

so now that we've discussed the different kinds of hackers that are there let’s move to different types of hacking now we can segregate hacking into different types depending on what the hacker is trying to achieve.

 

TYPES OF HACKING

 

   

 1)COMPUTER HACKING

We have computer hacking so this is the process of stealing the computer ID and password by applying hacking methods and getting unauthorized access to a computer system.

 

2)PASSWORD HACKING

This is the process of recovering secret passwords from data that has been stored in or transmitted by a computer system.

 

3)EMAIL HACKING

Now this includes gaining unauthorized access to an email account and using it without taking the permission of it’s owner for sending out spam links third-party threats and other such harmful activities.

 

4)NETWORK HACKING

Now hacking a network means gathering information about a network using a tool like telnet ,NS lookup ,ping ,tracer or net stap now these are done with the intent to harm the network system and/or hamper it’s operations.

 

5)WEBSITE HACKING

Now hacking a website means taking unauthorized control over web servo and its associated software such has a database and other interfaces.

Now hacking can also be segregated into many more classifications but these are the five major types of hacking that exist today okay now like every discipline out there in the world ethical hacking too is divided into distinct phases ethical hacking has six distinct phases now these phases are not strict rules but more like a guide line to be followed.

PHASES OF ETHICAL HACKING

 

1)RECONNAISSANCE

Reconnaissance is the process of information gathering in this phase the hacker gathers relevant information regarding the target system these include detecting services operating system packet hops to reach the system IP configurations etc and for this purpose vary stools like N map and Google Docs are used for recognition purposes.

 

2)SCANNING

In the scanning phase the hacker begins to actively probe the target machine or network for vulnerabilities that can be exploited tools like nessuss, nex pose and N map are widely used by hackers and ethical hackers a like in this process.

 

3)GAINING ACCESS

Now in this phase the vulnerability located during scanning is exploited using various methods and hackers try to enter the target system without raising any alarm the primary tool that is used in this process is called Metasploit.

 

4)MAINTAIN ACCESS

Now this is one of the most integral phases in this phase the hacker installed as various back doors and payloads onto the target system just in case you don't know payload is a term used for activities performed on system after gaining unauthorized access to it secondly back doors help the hackers gain quicker access onto the target system in the future whenever they want to do so.

 

5)CLEARING TRACKS

Now this part is an unethical activity it has to do with the deletion of logs of all the activities that take place during the hacking session none the less ethical hackers still have to perform this fails to demonstrate how a black hacker would go about his activities on the system that is being taggers.

 

6)REPORTING

Reporting is the last step of finishing the ethical hacking process here the ethical hacker compiles a report with his findings and the job that was done such as tools used the success rate vulnerabilities found and exploit processes.

RECONNAISSANCE IN DETAIL

 

 

 

Now let's discuss reconnaissance a bit more ,I already mentioned that it is the process of gathering information about the target system where what kind of information are we trying to gather well the list amount would be a task but they can be boiled down to the following firstly we are trying to gather some initial information about network like the DNS as such then we try to determine the network range thirdly we try to identify active machines that are on the network fourth we try to discover open ports and more access points into the system fifth is fingerprinting that is trying to figure out what operating system is actually running on the network then we try to uncover the service ports that are that we are trying to target through ethical hacking and we also try to map the network and how it's actually working.

TYPES OF RECONNAISSANCE

 

 Reconnaissance is of two types active and passive.

Active Reconnaissance refers to the process when you the hacker directly interact with the computer system to gain information this information can be relevant and accurate but there is a risk of getting detected if you're planning active reconnaissance without permission if you are detected then system admin can take severe actions against you and trail your subsequent activities.

Passive Reconnaissance is exactly the opposite of active reconnaissance that means you the hacker don't have any direct interactions with the computer this process is used to gather essential information without ever interacting with the target system.

 

 Now getting deeper into reconnaissance we can talk about two more things.

 

FOOT PRINTING

Foot printing is basically the first step where a hacker gathers as much information as possible to find the ways to intrude it to a target system or at least decide what types of attacks will be more suitable for the target now foot printing is a part of reconnaissance which is used for gathering possible information about targets computer system or network foot printing could be both passive and active for example reviewing a company's website is a very good example of passive foot printing whereas attempting to gain access to sensitive information through social engineering is an example of active information gathering or after foot printing now during this phase an ethical hacker can collect some information like the domain name the IP address ,name, spaces, employee information ,phone numbers ,emails and job information.

 

 now let me just tell you guys how easily foot printing can be done from your own computer now you as a user ,can extract the basic and easily accessible information about any computer system or network that is linked to the Internet general foot printing can be done by anybody in all honesty.

 

So firstly suppose you want to know the domain name ,information you can just do this by going online let's just open the new window, type “WHOis”  after that take a domain name of something like Amazon.com then just search and it'll give you all the information about the registered date ,when it'll expire ,when it was last updated ,the status that it has some client transfer prohibited then we can see the person it's registered and a lots of information regarding the domain server that they are running on, now this was very easily done by just going on to site called “WHOis” and just typing in our domain name we can also find the IP address of Amazon.com.