Working of an ethical hacker

Why Hackers Hack?

The main reason why Hackers hack is because they can hack. Hacking is a casual hobby for some Hackers - they just hack to see what they can hack and what they can’t hack, usually by testing their own systems. Many Hackers are the guys who get kicked out of corporate and government IT and security organizations. They try to bring down the status of the organization by attacking or stealing information.

The knowledge that malicious Hackers gain and the ego that comes with that knowledge is like an addiction. Some Hackers want to make your life miserable, and others simply want to be famous. Some common motives of malicious Hackers are revenge, curiosity, boredom, challenge, theft for financial gain, blackmail, extortion, and corporate work pressure.

Many Hackers say they do not hack to harm or profit through their bad activities, which helps them justify their work. They often do not look for money full of pocket. Just proving a point is often a good enough reward for them.

Prevention from Hackers

What can be done to prevent Hackers from finding new holes in software and exploiting them?

Information security research teams exist—to try to find these holes and notify vendors before they are exploited. There is a beneficial competition occurring between the Hackers securing systems and the Hackers breaking into those systems. This competition provides us with better and stronger security, as well as more complex and sophisticated attack techniques.

Defending Hackers create Detection Systems to track attacking Hackers, while the attacking Hackers develop bypassing techniques, which are eventually resulted in bigger and better detecting and tracking systems. The net result of this interaction is positive, as it produces smarter people, improved security, more stable software, inventive problem-solving techniques, and even a new economy.

Now when you need protection from Hackers, whom you want to call, “The Ethical Hackers”. An Ethical Hacker possesses the skills, mindset, and tools of a Hacker but is also trustworthy. Ethical Hackers perform the hacks as security tests computer systems.

Ethical Hacking - also known as Penetration Testing or White-Hat Hacking - involves the same Tools, Tricks and Techniques that Hackers use, but with one major difference:

Ethical hacking is Legal.

Ethical hacking is performed with the target’s permission. The intent of Ethical Hacking is to discover vulnerabilities from a Hacker’s viewpoint so systems can be better secured. Ethical Hacking is part of an overall information Risk Management program that allows for ongoing security improvements. Ethical hacking can also ensure that vendors’ claims about the security of their products are legitimate.

As Hackers expand their knowledge, so should you. You must think like them to protect your systems from them. You, as the ethical Hacker, must know activities Hackers carry out and how to stop their efforts. You should know what to look for and how to use that information to thwart Hackers’ efforts.

You don’t have to protect your systems from everything. You can’t. The only protection against everything is to unplug your computer systems and lock them away so no one can touch them - not even you. That’s not the best approach to information security. What’s important is to protect your systems from known Vulnerabilities and common Hacker attacks.

It’s impossible to overcome all possible vulnerabilities of your systems. You can’t plan for all possible attacks - especially the ones that are currently unknown which are called Zero Day Exploits. These are the attacks which are not known to the world. However in Ethical Hacking, the more combinations you try - the more you test whole systems instead of individual units - the better your chances of discovering vulnerabilities.

Steps Performed By hackers

1. Reconnaissance
2. Scanning
3. Gaining Access
4. Maintaining Access
5. Clearing Tracks

• Performing Reconnaissance
• Scanning and Enumeration
• Gaining access
• Maintaining access and Placing Backdoors
• Covering tracks or Clearing Logs

Phase I: Reconnaissance
Reconnaissance can be described as the pre-attack phase and is a systematic attempt to locate, gather, identify, and record information about the target. The Hacker seeks to find out as much information as possible about the target.

Phase II: Scanning and Enumeration
Scanning and enumeration is considered the second pre-attack phase. This phase involves taking the information discovered during reconnaissance and using it to examine the network. Scanning involves steps such as intelligent system port scanning which is used to determine open ports and vulnerable services. In this stage the attacker can use different automated tools to discover system vulnerabilities.

Phase III: Gaining Access
This is the phase where the real hacking takes place. Vulnerabilities discovered during the reconnaissance and scanning phase are now exploited to gain access. The method of connection the Hacker uses for an exploit can be a local area network, local access to a PC, the Internet, or offline. Gaining access is known in the Hacker world as owning the system. During a real security breach it would be this stage where the Hacker can utilize simple techniques to cause irreparable damage to the target system.

Phase IV: Maintaining Access and Placing Backdoors
Once a Hacker has gained access, they want to keep that access for future exploitation and attacks. Sometimes, Hackers harden the system from other Hackers or security personnel by securing their exclusive access with Backdoors, Root kits, and Trojans.

The attacker can use automated scripts and automated tools for hiding attack evidence and also to create backdoors for further attack.

Phase V: Clearing Tracks
In this phase, once Hackers have been able to gain and maintain access, they cover their tracks to avoid detection by security personnel, to continue to use the owned system, to remove evidence of hacking, or to avoid legal action. At present, many successful security breaches are made but never detected. This includes cases where firewalls and vigilant log checking were in place.

Working of an ethical hacker

Obeying the Ethical Hacking Commandments:

Every Ethical Hacker must follow few basic principles. If he do not follow, bad things can happen. Most of the time these principles get ignored or forgotten when planning or executing ethical hacking tests. The results are even very dangerous.

Working ethically:

The word ethical can be defined as working with high professional morals and principles. Whether you’re performing ethical hacking tests against your own systems or for someone who has hired you, everything you do as an ethical Hacker must be approved and must support the company’s goals. No hidden agendas are allowed! Trustworthiness is the ultimate objective. The misuse of information is absolutely not allowed. That’s what the bad guys do.

Respecting privacy:

Treat the information you gather with complete respect. All information you obtain during your testing — from Web application log files to clear-text passwords - must be kept private.

Not crashing your systems:

One of the biggest mistakes is when people try to hack their own systems; they come up with crashing their  systems. The main reason for this is poor planning. These testers have not read the documentation or misunderstand the usage and power of the security tools and techniques.

You can easily create miserable conditions on your systems when testing. Running too many tests too quickly on a system causes many system lockups. Many security assessment tools can control how many tests are performed on a system at the same time. These tools are especially handy if you need to run the tests on production systems during regular business hours.

Executing the plan:
 

In Ethical hacking, Time and patience are important. Be careful when you’re performing your ethical hacking tests.

A Hacker in your network or an employee looking over your shoulder may watch what’s going on. This person could use this information against you. It’s not practical to make sure that no Hackers are on your systems before you start. Just make sure you keep everything as quiet and private as possible.
 

This is especially critical when transmitting and storing your test results. You’re now on a reconnaissance mission.

Find as much information as possible about your organization and systems, which is what malicious Hackers do. Start with a broad view of mind and narrow your focus. Search the Internet for your organization’s name, your computer and network system names, and your IP addresses. Google is a great place to start for this.

Don’t take ethical hacking too far, though. It makes little sense to harden your systems from unlikely attacks. For instance, if you don’t have a internal Web server running, you may not have to worry too much about. However, don’t forget about insider threats from malicious employees or your friends or colleagues!