A Beginner's Guide to Learning Ethical Hacking

The word "hacker" is used to define programmers who obtain unauthorised access to computer systems via exploiting flaws or vulnerabilities, either for malicious or mischievous purposes. This includes the creation of algorithms that break passwords, breach networks, or disrupt network services.

Most hacking attacks are motivated by a desire to steal important data or money. Nonetheless, hacking doesn’t always involve malicious intent. Ethical hacking involves breaking into a company’s security system to find vulnerabilities and prevent future breaches.

Ethical hacking is rapidly becoming a popular career choice. There are a few courses where you can learn hacking for beginners free of cost, but it’s best to start with reading the basics of hacking before diving into books and enroll yourself to the best Ethical Hacking training program.

The Basics of Ethical Hacking

"Ethical Hacking" refers to hacking permitted by the system's owner. The method of actively protecting systems against hostile hackers is also referred to as "active security."

It involves bypassing a system's security protections to uncover vulnerabilities and find potential sources of data leaks and other possible risks. It must be done following local and organisational cyber law to be considered ethical.

People who do this kind of work call it "penetration testing." As the name implies, the goal of this technique is to get access to a system while documenting the actions used to do so. Penetration testing is explained in detail as a part of beginners' ethical hacking course.

The bottom line is that ethical hackers get access to a system before malicious ones do. An organisation's security staff will be able to patch the system and prevent attackers from getting into the system or executing a hack.

How Do Ethical Hackers Work?

To identify attack vectors that might harm corporate and operational data, ethical hackers must have extensive knowledge of information security. Employers, therefore, look for expertise earned via certifications or university computer science degrees and hands-on experience with security systems when hiring.

Ethical hackers often discover Insecure system setups, known and undisclosed hardware or software vulnerabilities, and operational flaws in process or technological countermeasures.

Ethical hackers also work to prevent damage and data leaks from distributed denial-of-service attacks. These are malicious hacking attempts that involve hundreds of hijacked computers flooding a company’s servers.

Ethical hackers are allowed to properly and regularly infiltrate a company's electronic infrastructure. An organisation's information security measures are tested by exploiting well-known attack vectors.

Ethical hackers employ many tactics and approaches as their black hat rivals or hackers who do not adhere to ethical standards. Ethical hackers cannot exploit vulnerabilities for their benefit and assist enterprises in improving security with better infosec policies, processes, and technology.

Penetration testing (pen testing) by ethical hackers should be performed on every company that has a network linked to the Internet or offers an online service.

Types of Ethical Hacking?

Since practically every system component may be hacked, there are several ethical hacking procedures. Hacking a component requires a thorough understanding of that component. Some distinct ethical hacking approaches include:

Web Application Hacking

Web hacking involves attacking software through HTTP by using programs such as the Chrome browser, tampering with the UI, or manipulating HTTP elements not contained in the UI.

System Hacking

Hacktivists use system hacking to obtain access to personal computers across a network. IT security specialists may utilise password breaking, privilege escalation, malicious software building, and packet sniffing as defensive techniques to resist these attacks.

Web Server Hacking

Web data is generated in real-time by an application software database server. To get passwords, passcodes, and corporate information from the web application, attackers utilize glueing, ping flood, port scan, sniffing assaults, and social engineering tactics.

Hacking Wireless Networks

A hacker can simply attack the system from nearby areas since wireless networks employ radio waves to communicate data. Often, these criminals employ network sniffing to determine the identifier and bodge a wireless network.

Social Engineering

Social engineering is the technique of influencing people to get them to reveal sensitive information. Criminals utilize eugenics because it is easier to target your natural inability to trust than to find out how to fake your gadget. The best way to learn about the various approaches to hacking systems is to take a free ethical hacking course for beginners.

Different Phases of Ethical Hacking

An enormous amount of work and perseverance is required to find and completely exploit system vulnerabilities. When it comes to ethical hacking, it's important to remember that real-world black hat hackers always come up with new methods to attack weaknesses.

The stages of the ethical hacking process help sequentially tackle security threats and pinpoint damage caused by the attack vector.

While the sequence of the stages isn’t standardised, every ethical hacker goes through the following stages to identify damage and threats:

1. Reconnaissance

Ethical hackers capture a "footprint" of the system to acquire as much information as possible before beginning a penetration test.

The hacker records the organization's requests during surveillance, gathers vital system configuration and login information, and does network scans to understand the system.

This comes from an understanding that successful assaults are a result of major vulnerabilities:

• Naming conventions
• Services on the network
• Servers handling workloads in the network
• IP Addresses
• Names and Login credentials
• Physical location of target machine

2. Scanning

The ethical hacker investigates the systems for vulnerabilities. Automated scanning technologies acquire data on all network computers, users, and services. Three kinds of scans are often used in penetration testing:

Network Mapping

The network topology, including details such as host information, servers, routers, and firewalls inside the host network, are explored in this step. For ethical hacking to be successful, these professionals must understand the layout of the network.

Port Scanning

Ethical hackers use automated tools to detect any open network ports. This makes it an effective way to identify the services and live systems in a network and how to connect to them.

Vulnerability Scanning

Automated tools are used to find security flaws that can be exploited to launch attacks. Many tools exist; however, there are a few popular ones used during the scanning phase of ethical hacking.

3. Gaining Access

With the initial requirements out of the way, ethical hackers seek to exploit vulnerabilities for administrator access in this stage.

It involves attempting to transfer a malicious payload to the application across the network, an adjacent subnetwork, or directly utilizing a linked machine.

To mimic attempted unauthorized access, hackers often utilize a variety of hacking tactics, including:

• Buffer overflows
• Phishing
• Injection attacks
• XML External Entity processing
• Using components with known vulnerabilities

If the assaults are successful, the hacker will have complete or partial control of the system and will be able to carry out further attacks such as data leaks and Distributed Denial of Service attacks (DDoS).

You can learn more about the aforementioned breaching techniques by studying web hacking for beginners.

4. Maintaining Access

The fourth phase of ethical hacking involves procedures for determining whether the hacker has access to the application after the initial hack.

For example, a white-hat hacker regularly attacks the system for new flaws and raises privileges to see how much influence attackers have after getting passed security clearance.

Some attackers may also attempt to conceal their identity by erasing any trace of an attack and installing a backdoor that allows them future access.

5. Clearing Tracks

To avoid leaving any evidence of their damaging behaviour, hackers use processes that delete any traces of their actions. Some of them include:

• Uninstalling scripts/applications used to carry out attacks.
• Modifying registry values
• Clearing logs
• Deleting folders created during the attack.

The ethical hacker ends the process by recording a report on the vulnerabilities and offering repair suggestions after completing all five phases of ethical hacking.

If you’re interested, taking a course in ethical hacking for absolute beginners is an excellent way to learn about the stages of ethical hacking in detail.

Requirements to Learn Ethical Hacking

As there are no standardised educational qualifications for ethical hackers, each company may establish its own.

However, a bachelor's or master's degree in information security, computer science, or even mathematics is a great foundation for anyone interested in pursuing a career as an ethical hacker.

Students interested in a career in ethical hacking may benefit from courses in programming, scripting, networking, and hardware engineering. These provide a fundamental understanding of the technologies that make up the systems they will be working on.

Other crucial technology skills include system administration and software creation. Search for an online Security course or ethical hacking course for beginners to get a long list of recommendations. Try a free hacking course for beginners to understand the basics. Internships and boot camps are good for experience in practical ethical hacking for beginners.

Ethical Hacker Skills

"How to Become an Ethical Hacker?" is a popular search term. However, before you jump in, you need to understand what skills you need to succeed in this industry.

The following are some of the most crucial talents to have if you want to work in this industry:

1. Computer and Networking Knowledge

An ethical hacker must have a strong understanding of technology and networks. Hacking is the practice of finding vulnerabilities in computer systems and networks.

As a result, candidates must be familiar with basic computer and networking principles such as process injection, thread killing, etc. In addition, they should be well-versed in networking basics such as the OSI model, IP addresses, MAC addresses, subnetting, and routing.

2. Operating System Knowledge

Operating system expertise is another key ethical hacking ability to have. Many web servers use Linux as their operating system. As a result, to detect cyber breaches and weaknesses, one needs to be familiar with the many distributions of Linux, such as Ubuntu, Red Hat, etc.

3. Expertise in Penetration Testing Tools and Methodology

If you want to be a hacker, you need to be well-versed in penetration testing tools and methods and have hands-on experience.

White-hat hackers conduct a penetration test on a company's IT infrastructure to identify weak points. It is a good idea to enroll in a class to improve your ethical hacking skills.

4. Expertise in Computer Programming

To be successful in this industry, one must have solid programming abilities. Formal training in understanding and writing code can help you start a career in ethical hacking.

Software and website developers use a variety of programming languages. Knowing how to program in various languages, such as Python, BASH, and C++/C, can enable you to spot malicious code or flaws in the code.

5. Cybersecurity Foundations

Understanding cybersecurity fundamentals is another crucial ability to possess while pursuing an ethical hacking certification program.

Whether you're a novice or an expert, you'll need to study the fundamentals, which include antivirus, app protection, device protection, database management systems, and password management, among other things.

6. Know-How in Cryptography

To be an ethical hacker, you must make sure that texts or other forms of communication between people in your organization are sent and received without putting their confidentiality and privacy at risk.

Cryptography is the act of converting text communications into an unreadable form, so if they are intercepted, hackers are unable to read them.

7. Ability to Solve Problems

Cyberattacks are increasingly complicated with the growth of technology. Ethical hackers must possess analytical and critical thinking abilities to break down attacks into their parts and analyze them.

Ethical Hacking Tools

1. Acunetix

Acunetix is an ethical hacking tool that identifies and reports on over 4500 online application vulnerabilities, including all SQL Injection and XSS variations. The Acunetix crawler can audit complicated, authorized apps since it supports HTML5, JavaScript, and single-page applications.

In addition, advanced Vulnerability Management capabilities are baked directly into the heart of the software, prioritizing threats based on data in a single, consolidated view and integrating the scanner's findings into other tools and platforms.

2. Netsparker

Netsparker is an ethical hacking tool that replicates a hacker's movements to find vulnerabilities in online applications and web APIs such as SQL Injection and Cross-site Scripting. Netsparker uniquely checks the detected vulnerabilities, ensuring that they are genuine and not false positives.

As a result, you don't have to spend hours manually checking the vulnerabilities once a scan is completed. It's offered as both a desktop application and a web app.

3. Intruder

Intruder is a completely automated scanner that detects cybersecurity flaws in your digital estate, explains the dangers, and assists you in addressing them. It's an excellent addition to your ethical hacking toolkit.

Intruder makes enterprise-grade vulnerability scanning accessible to businesses of all sizes with over 9,000 security tests. Misconfigurations, missing patches, and typical web application vulnerabilities like SQL injection and cross-site scripting are among the security tests it does.

Intruder is a vulnerability management tool built by seasoned security experts to take care of the cybersecurity legwork for you. It saves you time by sorting results based on context and proactively scanning your systems for the most recent vulnerabilities so you don't have to.

4. John the Ripper

One of the most well-known password crackers is John the Ripper. It's also one of the greatest security tools for remotely testing or auditing password strength in your operating system.

This password breaker can automatically recognize the encryption used in any password and adjust its password test algorithm appropriately, making it one of the smartest password cracking tools ever.

5. Metasploit

Metasploit is an open-source cyber-security project that enables information security experts to employ various penetration testing techniques to find remote software flaws. It also serves as a development platform for exploit modules. The Metasploit Framework, written in Ruby, is the project's most well-known outcome, allowing you to design, test, and execute attacks quickly. The framework also contains a suite of security tools for evading detection systems, performing security vulnerability checks, launching remote attacks, and enumerating networks and hosts.

6. Nmap

Nmap (Network Mapper) is a free open-source security application that information security experts use to monitor and audit network and operating system security on both local and remote sites.

It's one of the most widely used tools in the hacker's arsenal. Even though it is one of the oldest security programs on the market (first released in 1997), it is still regularly maintained and gets new upgrades every year.

It's also recognized as one of the most effective network mappers available, having a reputation for being quick and comprehensive in any security assessment.

It can do security audits on devices, discover open ports on remote servers, network mapping and enumeration, uncover vulnerabilities inside any network, and run huge DNS searches against domains and subdomains.

7. Wireshark

Wireshark is a free open-source network traffic analyzer that may be used in real-time. Wireshark is well-known for its ability to discover security issues in any network and its efficacy in resolving common networking issues, thanks to its sniffing technique.

While sniffing the network, you can intercept and read findings in the human-readable format, making it simpler to see possible issues such as low latency, threats, and vulnerabilities.

8. OpenVAS

OpenVAS (also known as "Nessus") is an open-source network scanner that can find remote vulnerabilities in any host. It is one of the most well-known network vulnerability scanners, and it is widely used by system administrators, DevOps, and information security experts.

While its web-based interface enables it to be used on any operating system, it also has a command-line interface (CLI) that works well on Linux, Unix, and Windows.

The free version may be downloaded from the OpenVAS website, although the Greenbone Security (parent business) website also offers a commercial enterprise licence.

9. IronWASP

IronWASP is a wonderful tool for ethical hacking as well. Web servers and public apps may benefit from this tool's free, open-source and multi-platform nature.

With IronWASP, you don't have to be an expert in using its most important features. With a few clicks of the mouse, the whole scanning process is complete. For beginner hacking, IronWASP is a good tool to start with.

10. Maltego

Maltego is the ideal tool for collecting data and reconnaissance when you first begin pentesting a system.

In this situation, it can be used to connect and identify links among individuals, names, phone numbers, email addresses, firms, organisations, and profiles on social media sites.

In addition, data from Who is records and DNS records may also be used to explore the connections between internet-based infrastructures such as domain names (DNS servers), IP addresses (netblocks), files (web pages), and URLs.

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Conclusion

Almost everything is now available online and over the Internet. In the digital era, digitising everything is indeed convenient, but it has its drawbacks. Weak security is a common characteristic of eCommerce websites and apps.

This has increased the demand for qualified ethical hackers. If you want to start learning hacking, check out KnowledgeHut's best Ethical Hacking training. It’s also not hard to find resources where you can learn hacking for beginners free of cost, but getting certified will make you more of an attractive hire.