Hacking: Understanding Hacking & Types of Hacking TABLE OF CONTENTS: Hacking: Understanding Hacking & Types of Hacking Phishing Current Scenario The unceasing quest of human mind has conceived to almost all crucial inventions of the world. Hacking dates back its inception to the same human urge to know and hence explore things. Computer Hacking is a practice of peeping into the extreme technical details of any computer application, program, or the whole system in order to extend its capabilities or alter its functionalities. People who rightly follow this practice of hacking are termed as ‘hackers’. A hacker’s vision towards solving any technical problem is undoubtedly beyond the perception of any normal computer expert. The open-source coding has been very beneficial for hackers to test and invent out of their passion for programming, say UNIX is the best example. This practice can either be ethical or unethical. The activity where one breaks into the system but do not violate its security and credentials is called Ethical Hacking. Ethical hackers aim to bring into the administrator’s notice, vulnerabilities and voids in the system thereby, improvising the robustness and security. They are purely tech-geeks with immaculate programming skills and hands-on knowledge on both computer hardware and software. On the other hand, there are people who can though break into systems, get access to secured accounts but their actions are usually unauthorized while they make a backdoor entry into your system. These people (often misinterpreted as hackers) are called as ‘crackers’. They try and crack passwords, security codes, etc using various hacking softwares which are already available. Such softwares are meant to break the code using millions of trials programmed into it by other hackers. While hacking can prove really useful when companies hire hackers to keep a check on the security of their network and transactions, it may be equally harmful even to an individual operating his/her personal computer sitting at home. Footprinting What is the first step one would take before seeking admission in a university or college? Quite unanimously, it must be a primary research about the institute. Footprinting is an analogous step which hackers take before gaining access into any network. The systematic footprinting of an organization enables attackers to create a complete profile of an organization’s security posture like system architecture, network blocks and IP addresses exposed on the Internet. Hackers gain reconnaissance of the target following a sequence of steps as: 1. Open Source Footprinting- The first step a hacker takes is to visit the website of a potential target. He then looks for contact information of the administrators which may help in guessing the password or in Social Engineering. 2. Network Enumeration- This is the next step in gaining information where the hacker tries to identify the domain names and the network blocks of the target network. 3. Scanning- Once the network block is known, the next step is to spy for active IP addresses on the target network. The Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) is a good alternative for identifying active IP addresses. 4. Stack Fingerprinting- Once the hosts and port have been mapped by scanning the target network, the final footprinting step can be performed. This step is called stack fingerprinting. This is the process of determining the operating system and different version of services running on target hosts. There are different ways a hacker can attack a system in order to gain access which may be: · A backdoor program entry. · Through unauthorized executable files called viruses and worms
Posted on: Sun, 01 Dec 2013 04:42:39 +0000
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