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learn hacking in 60 mins

2020-05-06T20:28:00.001+05:30

BASICS OF ETHICAL HACKING

I. INTRODUCTION

The vast growth of the Internet has brought many good things like electronic commerce, email, easy

access to vast stores of reference material, etc. One of the more effective ways of testing network

security is penetration testing or ethical hacking. Activities focus on the identification and exploitation

of security vulnerabilities and subsequent implementation of corrective measures (Using an Ethical

Hacking Technique). Organizations are increasingly evaluating the success or failure of their current

security measures through then use of ethical hacking processes. As, with most technological

advances, there is also another side: criminal hackers who will secretly steal the organization’s

information and transmit it to the open internet. These types of hackers are called black hat hackers.

So, to overcome these major issues, another category of hackers came into existence and these

hackers are termed as ethical hackers or white hat hackers. So, this paper describes ethical hackers,

their skills, and how they go about helping their customers. Ethical hackers perform the hacks as

security tests for their systems. This type of hacking is always legal and trustworthy. In other terms,

ethical hacking is the testing of resources for the betterment of technology and is focussed on securing

and protecting IP systems. Ethical hacking is a way of doing a security assessment. Like all other

assessments, an ethical hack is a random sample, and passing an ethical hack doesn’t mean there are no

security issues.

What is Ethical Hacking?

Ethical hacking provides a way to determine the security of an information technology environment –

at least from a technical point of view. As the name ethical hacking already tells, the idea has

something to do with hacking. But what does “hacking” mean? “The word hacking has two

definitions. The first definition refers to the hobby/profession of working with computers. The second

definition refers to breaking into computer systems. While the first definition is older and is still used

by many computer enthusiasts (who refer to cyber-criminals as "crackers"), the second definition is

much more commonly used.” In the context of “ethical hacking”, hacking refers to the second

definition – breaking into computer systems. It can be assumed that hacking is illegal, as breaking into

a house would be. At this point, “ethical” comes into play. Ethical has a very positive touch and

describes something noble which leads us to the following definition of ethical hacking: Ethical

hacking describes the process of attacking and penetrating computer systems and networks to discover

and point out potential security weaknesses for a client which is responsible for the attacked

information technology environment. An ethical hack’s results is a detailed report of the findings as

well as a testimony that a hacker with a certain amount of time and skills is or isn’t able to

successfully attack a system or get access to certain information. Ethical hacking can be categorized

as a security assessment, a kind of training, a test for the security of an information technology

environment. An ethical hack shows the risks an information technology environment is facing and

actions can be taken to reduce certain risks or to accept them.

II. CATEGORIES OF HACKERS

White Hats

An ethical hacker is also known as White hat hacker, or white hat, they use programming skills to

determine the vulnerabilities in computer systems.

Black Hats

a non-ethical hacker or black hat exploits these vulnerabilities for mischief, personal gain, or other

purposes. An ethical hacker introspects the weakness in computer security, points them out, and may

suggest changes to the system to secure the information.

Grey Hats

Gray Hats hack for different reasons either ethically or unethically depending on the situation and

circumstances at hand.

III. PENETRATION TESTING

Penetration testing is also known as intrusion testing or red teaming is the method of examining the

weakness and vulnerabilities of Computer and network security. Penetration testing helps to measure

the effectiveness of system security or ineffectiveness of the system security.

The need for Penetration Testing: The main purpose of penetration testing is to identify the security

weakness under controlled circumstances so that the security flaws can be eliminated before hackers

exploit the system. Ethical hackers use their skills and application penetration testing to discover the

vulnerability Assessment, give importance to highly sensitive data. Penetration testing may be done

from a business perspective to safeguard the organization against failure through preventing financial

loss, as well as an operational perspective to identify the risk and vulnerabilities.

Types of Penetration Test: Generally there are two types of penetration testing namely

1) Black Box Test

2) White Box Test

The type of penetration testing depends upon the situation of an organization wants to test, whether

the scope is to simulate an attack by an insider (employee, network admin/ system admin, etc) or

external source. The difference between the two is the amount of information provided to the

penetration tester about the system is tested. In black-box penetration testing is closely stimulated to

that of an external attacker, giving little info or no knowledge about the systems to be tested. The

penetration testers gather as much information about the target system as possible to perform the

test. In white-box penetration testing, the tester generally provided with detailed information about the

network to be tested includes the IP address.

Merits of Penetration Testing: Penetration testing are effective for many reasons

(1) avoid the cost of network

(2) preserve the corporate image and customer loyalty

(3) meet the requirements

(4) manage vulnerabilities.

Penetration testing provides detailed information about actual, exploitable security threats. By doing

a penetration test we can easily identify the vulnerabilities that are most critical as well as least significant.

Penetration test benefits the organization by performing security patches and security resource more

precisely to safeguard the information.

IV. WORKING OF AN ETHICAL HACKER

The working of an ethical hacker involves the under mentioned steps:

1) Obeying the Ethical Hacking Commandments: Every Ethical Hacker must follow a few basic

principles. If he does 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.

2) 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.

3) 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.

4) 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.

5) Executing the plan: In Ethical hacking, Time and patience are important. Be careful when

you’re performing your ethical hacking tests.

V. ETHICAL HACKING METHODOLOGY

An ethical hacking methodology is quite similar to a hacking methodology as there are more or less

the same goals. Anyhow, some differences exist. An ethical hacker doesn’t need to take that much

care in hiding his traces and tracks. He can choose a more aggressive way and doesn’t need to bother

with slowing down portscans (to avoid detection) or evading intrusion detection systems – at least

most of the time unless it is especially desired by the client. Mostly, an ethical hacker just hasn’t the

time to be that careful in blurring his traces and tracks unless the customer pays for. Nevertheless, a

lot of similarities can be found in a hacking methodology. An ethical hacking methodology overview

can be seen in figure 2. A similar setup could be used by a hacker for his attacks. The ethical hacking

methodology described is based on eight possible phases where interactions between the phases are possible, even required as hacking is an iterative process; going back to an earlier phase is absolutely

possible (and needed).

step -1 Reconnaissance
step -2 scanning
step -3 gaining control
step -4 Maintaining Access
step -5 Covering Tracks

1. Reconnaissance: It refers to gather as much information as we can about the target prior to

performing an attack. It can be further classified into Active and Passive. Former involves

information gathering with direct interaction like social engineering and the later without any

direct interaction by searching news releases or public records.

2. Scanning: It refers to scan for all the open as well as closed ports and even for the known

vulnerabilities on the target machine.

3. Gaining Control: It can be gained at the OS level, system-level, or even network level. From

normal access, a hacker can even proceed with privilege escalation. It often includes password

cracking, buffer overflows, DoS attacks, etc.

4. Maintaining Access: It is where hacker strives to retain its control over a target with backdoors,

rootkits, or Trojans. Compromised machines can even be used as Bots and Zombies for

further attacks.

5. Covering Tracks: It is also known as Daisy Chaining. To avoid being exposed or caught, a

good hacker will leave no impressions of his presence. So he attempts to overwrite the system

and application logs.

VI. ETHICAL HACKING PROCESS

The Ethical hacking process needs to be planned in advance. All technical, management and

strategical issues must be considered. Planning is important for any amount of testing – from a simple

password test to an all-out penetration test on a web application. Backup off data must be ensured,

otherwise, the testing may be called off unexpectedly if someone claims they never authorise for the

tests. So, a well-defined scope involves the following information:

1. Specific systems to be tested.

2. Risks that are involved.

3. Preparing schedule to carry test and overall timeline.

4. Gather and explore the knowledge of the systems we have before testing.

5. What is done when a major vulnerability is discovered?

6. The specific deliverables- this includes security assessment reports and a higher level report

outlining the general vulnerabilities to be addressed, along with countermeasures that should

be implemented when selecting systems to test, start with the most critical or vulnerable

systems.

VII. HACKING TOOLS

There are various characteristics for the use of tools for ethical hacking which are as follows:

1. Adequate documentation

2. Detailed reports on the discovered vulnerabilities, including how they can be fixed

3. Updates and support when needed

4. High-level reports that can be presented to managers.

The list and description of various tools used in the ethical hacking process are as follows:

Scanning tools: The Scanning tools are quite helpful in the ethical hacking process. In technical detail,

a scanner sends a message requesting to open a connection with a computer on a particular port. (A

a port is an interface where different layers of software exchange information).

Port Scanners:

 Nmap

 Superscan

 Angry IP Scanner

 Nikto

 Unicornscan

 Autoscan

Packet Sniffers: They allow you to capture and visualize the traffic that is coming on your website.

 Wireshark

 TCPdump

 Ethercap

 Dsniff

 EtherApe

Vulnerability Exploitation: These are the tools you would use in order to gain access to various

places.

 Metasploit

 Sqlmap

 Sqlninja

 Social Engineer Toolkit

 Netsparker

 BeEF

 Dradis

Vulnerability Scanners: These are designed to access a computer or network’s vulnerability to attacks.

The functionality of these tools varies from one to the other, but they all present a detailed analysis of

how vulnerable your system is.

 Nessus

 OpenVAS

 Nipper

 Retina

 QualysGuard

 Nexpose

Hacking Operating System: These are the OS that has been designed specifically for hackers.

 Backtrack5r3

 Kali Linux

 SE Linux

 Knoppix

 Backbox Linux

 Pentoo

 Matriux Krypton

 NodeZero

 Blackbuntu

 CAINE

 DEFT

 Helix

Intrusion Detection Systems: These tools are one of the most important parts of any security

arrangement. They allow you to detect those threats that are potentially dangerous for your system.

 Snort

 NetCap

VIII. CONCLUSION

Ethical hacking seems to be a new buzz word although the techniques and ideas of testing security by

attacking an installation aren’t new at all. But, with the present poor security on the internet, ethical

hacking may be the most effective way to plug security holes and prevent intrusions. On the other

hand ethical hacking tools have also been notorious tools for crackers. So, at present, the tactical

objective is to stay one step ahead of the crackers. Ethical Hacking is a tool, which if properly

utilized, can prove useful for understanding the weaknesses of a network and how they might be

exploited. After all, ethical hacking will play a certain role in the security assessment offerings and

certainly has earned its place among other security assessments. In conclusion, it must be said that the

ethical hacker is an educator who seeks to enlighten not only the customer but also the security

industry as a whole.

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basics of kali linux

2020-03-24T14:23:00.002+05:30

commands

Best Useful Commands for Kali Linux
Ls
The command “ls” stands for (List Directory Contents), List the contents of the folder, be it file or folder, from which it runs. The most common options are -a (all files) and -l (long or details)
Nmap
Nmap, also known as network mapper is a pretty simple tool in Kali Linux that allows you to scan open ports, running services, NetBIOS, OS detection etc.
Lsblk
The lsblk stands for List Block Devices, print block devices by their assigned name on the standard output in a tree-like fashion.
apt-get
The apt-get tool automatically updates a Debian machine and installs Debian packages/programs.
Cal
The cal command simply displays a formatted calendar of current month in your terminal screen.
Sudo
The sudo command allows a permitted user to execute a command as the root user or another users.
Chroot
The Chroot command allows to run a command with a different root directory.
Cron
The cron command is a daemon to execute scheduled commands.
Fgrep
The fgrep command allow to search for files that meet a desired criteria.
Help
This command will display a built-in commands.
So please try the command and see the result.

kali linux basic commands

2020-03-24T13:20:00.002+05:30

kali linux basic commands

1. Date Command –

This command is generally used to display the system date and time. You can also set a custom date by typing the below command in your terminal.

Syntax – “date –set=’2 Apr 2020 16:03′

2. Cal Command –

The cal command simply displays a formatted calendar of current month in your terminal screen. If in case, you need an advanced version of cal, then you can also download ncal package in your Linux machine which displays the calendar vertically along with more options.

3. whoami Command –

The whoami command simply prints the effective user ID where as who command prints the information about users who are currently logged in.

You can also use the “w” command to see who is logged on and what they are doing.

4. pwd Command –
pwd stands for “Print Working Directory” which simply prints the name of the working directory or you can directly use the below command to use pwd.
Syntax – “/bin/pwd”

5.ls Command –

This command is one of the most useful command in Kali Linux that lists directory contents of files and directories. With ls command, you can easily list out all hidden files of a directory with -a attribute and for more detailed output you can use -l attribute.
Syntax: ls -al
6. cd Command –
The cd command also known as chdir (Change Directory) is a command used to change/switch the current working directory.
7.mkdir Command –
The command used for creating directories is mkdir. For example, if you want to create a directory under Desktop called yeahhub, open a terminal and type the following command:
Command: mkdir /root/Desktop/yeahhub
8. cat Command –
The cat (concatenate) command is one of the most frequently used command in Kali Linux which allows us to create single or multiple files, view contain of file, concatenate files and redirect output in terminal or files.

9. cp Command –
This command is used to copy files or group of files or directory which creates an exact image of a file on a disk with different file name.

10. mv Command –
The mv command moves, or renames, files and directories on your file system.
The removal process unlinks a file name in a file system from its associated data, and marks that space on the storage device as usable by future writes. In other words, when you remove a file, the data in the file isn’t changed, but it’s no longer associated with a filename.
12. uname Command –
This command prints the information about the current system. The uname command within Linux allows you to view system information about your Linux environment
With uname -a command, which gives you more information about the system like Kernel Name, Node Name, Kernel Release, Kernel Version, Machine, Processor, Hardware Platform and Operating system.
13. uptime Command –
The uptime command gives you the time for which the system has been up (or running). Uptime’s basic usage is very easy – just write the command’s name and press enter.
In case you just want to know the time for which the system has been up, and that too in a more human-readable format, use the -p command line option.

14. users Command –
This command display login names of users currently logged in on system.

15. less Command –
less command is used to view files instead of opening the file. The less command is considered to be a more powerful version of the “more” command which is used to display information to the terminal one page at a time.
You can view any text file using the less command simply by typing the following into a terminal window:
Command: less /etc/passwd

16. more Command –
The more command allows you to display output in the terminal one page at a time. This is especially useful when running a command which causes a lot of scrolling such as the ls command or the du command.
The more command works with any application that outputs to the screen. A good way of testing this is to type the following into a terminal window:
Command: more /etc/passwd

17. sort Command –
Sort command sorts the contents of a text file, line by line. Sort is a standard command line program that print the lines of its input or concatenation of all files listed in its argument list in sorted order.
With -r switch, you can sort the contents of any file in reverse order.

18. vi Command –
The vi editor is a screen editor which is available on almost all UNIX systems. In general, vi has two modes: the command mode and the insert mode.
To begin entering text in an empty file, you must first change from the command mode to the insert mode. To do this, type the letter i. When you start typing, anything you type will be entered into the file.
Type a few short lines and hit Return at the end of each of line. Unlike word processors, vi does not use word wrap. It will break a line at the edge of the screen. If you make a mistake, you can use the Backspace key to remove your errors. If the Backspace key doesn’t work properly on your system, try using the Ctrl h key combination.

19. free Command –
free is a command which can give us valuable information on available RAM in Linux machine. It also gives information about total used and available space of physical memory and swap memory with buffers used by kernel.
Free command with -t option, will list the total line at the end.
20. history Command –
One of the extensively used command in Kali Linux is history command. The bash shell stores a history of commands entered, which can be used to repeat commands by using the history command.

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