Ethical Hacking: The 5 Phases
Hacking refers to the possession of extra-ordinary skills to pro-actively think beyond the network security officers and break through the existing security systems. Ethical hacking is the implementation of hacking techniques and skills the legal way to help organizations to identify potential threats to the computer and network security. If hackers are intelligent, then ethical hackers are the master-minds as they think ahead of the hackers to protect and safeguard the security system from intrusion and attacks.
The Five Phases
If you intend to become an ethical hacker and get into the highest demanding role in IT, you must get familiar the way hackers work and think. There are five phases followed by the hackers. To defeat malicious hackers, you must master these phases.
- Reconnaissance: Reconnaissance refers to gathering all the possible information about the target prior to launch an attack. This phase also involves internal and external network scanning. It is essential for hackers to plan and strategize their attacks. An ethical hacker must have a deep understanding of this phase to effectively safeguard the systems and prevent hackers form collecting valuable information about the organization. Partly, this phase also focuses on “social engineering” and an ethical hacker is expected to keep the organization data, system and network safe from the social engineering attacks. An ethical hacker must have the competency to differentiate among various reconnaissance methods and suggestions for preventive measures for potential threats. This skill can be gained through CEH training and certification course offered by authorized training partners.
- Scanning: Scanning is the next phase of hacking where the hacker uses the information collected during reconnaissance to identify vulnerabilities. In this phase, attackers use automated tools such as host scanners and war dialers to identify the system locations and makes attempt to discover vulnerabilities. Attackers can use Traceroute tool to obtain critical information from the systems, routers, and firewalls of the target organization. An ethical hacker must be acquainted with the defense mechanism like filtering. Organizations using intrusion detection systems also should be cautious as attackers might use evasion techniques as well to escape from being detected.
- Gaining Access: The phase of gaining access enables hackers in attacking and creating a potential damage, though attackers do not always need to gain access to cause the damage. For instance, denial of service attacks exhaust the resources and stop running of services on the target system. The techniques that can be employed in this phase of hacking include stack-based buffer overflows, denial-of-service, and session hijacking. These techniques are employed to send a malformed packet containing a bug to the target system and exploit the vulnerability. An ethical hacker ought to be proactively ready with the implemented countermeasures so that attacks can be prevented.
- Maintaining Access: After gaining access to the target, it is highly essential for the malicious hackers to maintain and hold on the access to cause the planned damage. In this phase, the attackers can exploit the system and resources both and later use it to scan and exploit other systems as well. Sometimes, the attackers use sniffing technique to capture the network traffic and to remain undetected as they remove evidence of their entry as well. A countermeasure for this stage can be deployed by ethical hackers using intrusion detection systems like honeypots, honeynets and detect intruders.
- Covering Tracks: At this stage, the attacker destroys his presence. Intruders who wish to remain obscure execute and deploy the erasing evidence techniques. They begin with erasing contaminated logins and manipulate the event logs to make system admins feel safe about the organization's network and system security. Steganography and tunneling are two prominent techniques used by malicious hackers. Attackers use the system to cover their attacks and avoid detection.
Aiming to get acquainted with ethical hacking techniques and tools, you require to pursue CEH training course from an authorized training partner of EC-Council. CEH certification training course aims to increase your proficiency in computer security assessment, ethical hacking, penetration testing and helps you learn the techniques to identify and address various security concerns on diverse levels and ultimately defeat hackers by safeguarding the organization.
Comments
Post a Comment