In continuation of this series, we discussed more about Introduction to HACKING, What Hacking is, who usually performs Hacking and what exactly is the Motive behind Hacking? We need to understand here that HACKING is not something that HACKERS thought about it in instance and started executing ATTACKS.
Sometimes, it takes year to develop an attack and execute it. It is true that it can happen that attack fails. Hacking also comes up with it’s own life cycle which needs to adhere in order to have successful attack.
Phases of Hacking
Reconnaissance
An initial phase of HACKING where Hacker start understanding and gathering the information about a TARGET.
- Gathering an information is like sometimes analyzing the Social Site for gathering the basic information about target.
- Detailing the Employees, Client’s and there own network everything.
- Technically, more focus is on Networks, Websites, internal architectures and their own intranets etc.
- Two ways hacker gather the footprint/information on target:
- Passive: Trying to collect the information about the target without directly accessing the target. This involves collecting information from social media, public websites etc.
- Active: Directly interacting with the target to gather information about the target. Eg Using Nmap tool to scan the target.
- All the above stated statements says the basics are Observations, Internet Sources and Social Engineering.
Scanning
After gathering all the data and information in the last phase. In this phase all the information will be scanned for the relevance and effectiveness of it’s usage.
- This is more a technical phase in which scanning of Networks, Ports, takes place.
- This helps hackers to extract vulnerabilities that where the entry point can be.
- Formally, tools like network mappers, ping tools, scanners etc are used.
- During this phase, the upper level information extracted using these tools like OS details, Port Status, Open Ports, types of devices in the network etc evolves.
Gaining Access
In the last phase, we have seen that information gathered in first phase scanned for it’s validity. In scanned phase we are able to pick the leakage points and now in Gaining Access it’s time for trying to access them.
- First and foremost attackers tries to access network from various open ports or links.
- From Network to OS and to Applications. It is easy to define the link and if it happens successfully than we can easily imagine what attacker can do.
- Soon, it will be like escalate privileges in order to be able to obtain the global access and this leads to access to interlinked systems also.
- With this an attacker can try denial of service, password cracking etc
Maintaining Access
Gaining Access does mean that the work is done and now there is no further need. Attackers need to maintain the access in order to return later or to enable himself for further greater damage at the site.
- In this phase attackers always tries to create some credentials or some back door entry methods.
- Ownership of the system is necessary at any point of time to extract any kind of information.
- Various kind of operations like upload, download, configurations changes, roles & responsibilities changes etc.
- Inter linked compromised systems identified during Gaining Access phase can be used further also to gain access to main system.
Clearing Tracks
Attackers has done whatever they want in all the above phases. What about the logs, monitors, check points, firewalls etc. In this phase attacker will clear all tracks which shows or can easily predict suspicious activity.
- Here, it is important to understand that after getting access to the system no one wants to miss the chance loose it.
- The attacker over writes whatever needs to be to avoid suspicion.
This is where we would like to conclude the same and we can say that Life Cycle exist in every case. By going through all the above phases it is important to understand that above listed all the things. These all are the basics and each n every phase is in depth. We will be covering these phases in detail now in coming articles of this series. Stay Tuned…….
Happy Reading ……………
