basic of hacking

BASIC OF HACKING

Hacker means someone who finds weaknesses in a computer or computer network, though the term can also refer to someone with an advanced understanding of computers and computer networks.Hackers may be motivated by a multitude of reasons, such as profit, protest, or challenge. The subculture that has evolved around hackers is often referred to as the computer underground but it is now an open community. While other uses of the word hacker exist that are not related to computer security, they are rarely used in mainstream context.




Classifications:-

Several subgroups of the computer underground with different attitudes use different terms to demarcate themselves from each other, or try to exclude some specific group with which they do not agree. Eric S. Raymond (author of The New Hacker's Dictionary) advocates that members of the computer underground should be called crackers. Yet, those people see themselves as hackers and even try to include the views of Raymond in what they see as one wider hacker culture, a view harshly rejected by Raymond himself. Instead of a hacker/cracker dichotomy, they give more emphasis to a spectrum of different categories, such as white hat, grey hat, black hat and script kiddie.
White Hat:-

A white hat hacker breaks security for non-malicious reasons, perhaps to test their own security system or while working for a security company which makes security software. The term "white hat" in Internet slang refers to an ethical hacker. This classification also includes individuals who perform penetration tests and vulnerability assessments within a contractual agreement. The EC-Council , also known as the International Council of Electronic Commerce Consultants has developed certifications, course ware, classes, and online training covering the diverse arena of Ethical Hacking.

Black Hat:-

A "black hat" hacker is a hacker who "violates computer security for little reason beyond maliciousness or for personal gain" (Moore, 2005). Black hat hackers form the stereotypical, illegal hacking groups often portrayed in popular culture, and are "the epitome of all that the public fears in a computer criminal". Black hat hackers break into secure networks to destroy data or make the network unusable for those who are authorized to use the network.


Part 1: Targeting

The hacker determines what network to break into during this phase. The target may be of particular interest to the hacker, either politically or personally, or it may be picked at random. Next, they will port scan a network to determine if it is vulnerable to attacks, which is just testing all ports on a host machine for a response. Open ports—those that do respond—will allow a hacker to access the system. 


Part 2: Research And Information Gathering

It is in this stage that the hacker will visit or contact the target in some way in hopes of finding out vital information that will help them access the system. The main way that hackers get desired results from this stage is from "social engineering", which will be explained below. Aside from social engineering, hackers can also use a technique called "dumpster diving". Dumpster diving is when a hacker will literally search through users' garbage in hopes of finding documents that have been thrown away, which may contain information a hacker can use 
                                                          directly or indirectly, to help them gain access to a network.  
Part 3: Finishing The Attack

This is the stage when the hacker will invade the preliminary target that he/she was planning to attack or steal. Many "hackers" will be caught after this point, lured in or grabbed by any data also known as a honeypot (a trap set up by computer security personnel).





Grey Hat:-

A grey hat hacker is a combination of a Black Hat and a White Hat Hacker. A Grey Hat Hacker may surf the internet and hack into a computer system for the sole purpose of notifying the administrator that their system has been hacked, for example. Then they may offer to repair their system for a small fee.




Elite Hacker:-

A social status among hackers, elite is used to describe the most skilled. Newly discovered exploits will circulate among these hackers. Elite groups such as Masters of Deception conferred a kind of credibility on their members.


Script Kiddi:-


A script kiddie (or skiddie) is a non-expert who breaks into computer systems by using pre-packaged automated tools written by others, usually with little understanding of the underlying concept—hence the term script (i.e. a prearranged plan or set of activities) kiddie (i.e. kid, child—an individual lacking knowledge and experience, immature).



Neophyt:-

A neophyte, "n00b", or "newbie" is someone who is new to hacking or phreaking and has almost no knowledge or experience of the workings of technology, and hacking.



Blue Hat:-

A blue hat hacker is someone outside computer security consulting firms who is used to bug test a system prior to its launch, looking for exploits so they can be closed. Microsoft also uses the term BlueHat to represent a series of security briefing events.

Hacktivis:-

A hacktivist is a hacker who utilizes technology to announce a social, ideological, religious, or political message. In general, most hacktivism involves website defacement or denial-of-service attacks. Nation state Intelligence agencies and cyberwarfare operatives of nation states.





Attack:-

A typical approach in an attack on Internet-connected system is:

1. Network enumeration: Discovering information about the intended target.

2. Vulnerability analysis: Identifying potential ways of attack.

3. Exploitation: Attempting to compromise the system by employing the vulnerabilities found through the vulnerability analysis.

In order to do so, there are several recurring tools of the trade and techniques used by computer criminals and security experts.


Security Exploit:-

A security exploit is a prepared application that takes advantage of a known weakness. Common examples of security exploits are SQL injection, Cross Site Scripting and Cross Site Request Forgery which abuse security holes that may result from substandard programming practice. Other exploits would be able to be used through FTP, HTTP, PHP, SSH, Telnet and some web-pages. These are very common in website/domain hacking.


Techniques

Vulnerability Scanner:-

A vulnerability scanner is a tool used to quickly check computers on a network for known weaknesses.Hackers also commonly use port scanners. These check to see which ports on a specified computer are "open" or available to access the computer, and sometimes will detect what program or service is listening on that port, and its version number. (Note that firewalls defend computers from intruders by limiting access to ports/machines both inbound and outbound, but can still be circumvented.)

Password Cracking:-

Password cracking is the process of recovering passwords from data that has been stored in or transmitted by a computer system. A common approach is to repeatedly try guesses for the password.




Packet Sniffer:-

A packet sniffer is an application that captures data packets, which can be used to capture passwords and other data in transit over the network.
Spoofing Attack (Phishing):-

A spoofing attack involves one program, system, or website successfully masquerading as another by falsifying data and thereby being treated as a trusted system by a user or another program. The purpose of this is usually to fool programs, systems, or users into revealing confidential information, such as user names and passwords, to the attacker.

Rootkit:-

A rootkit is designed to conceal the compromise of a computer's security, and can represent any of a set of programs which work to subvert control of an operating system from its legitimate operators. Usually, a rootkit will obscure its installation and attempt to prevent its removal through a subversion of standard system security. Rootkits may include replacements for system binaries so that it becomes impossible for the legitimate user to detect the presence of the intruder on the system by looking at process tables.
Social Engineering:-

When a Hacker, typically a black hat, is in the second stage of the targeting process, he or she will typically use some social engineering tactics to get enough information to access the network. A common practice for hackers who use this technique, is to contact the system administrator and play the role of a user who cannot get access to his or her system.

Trojan Horses:-

A Trojan horse is a program which seems to be doing one thing, but is actually doing another. A trojan horse can be used to set up a back door in a computer system such that the intruder can gain access later. (The name refers to the horse from the Trojan War, with conceptually similar function of deceiving defenders into bringing an intruder inside.)



Viruses:-

A virus is a self-replicating program that spreads by inserting copies of itself into other executable code or documents. Therefore, a computer virus behaves in a way similar to a biological virus, which spreads by inserting itself into living cells. While some are harmless or mere hoaxes most computer viruses are considered malicious.




Worm:-

Like a virus, a worm is also a self-replicating program. A worm differs from a virus in that it propagates through computer networks without user intervention. Unlike a virus, it does not need to attach itself to an existing program. Many people conflate the terms "virus" and "worm", using them both to describe any self-propagating program.





Key Loggers:-

A key logger is a tool designed to record ('log') every keystroke on an affected machine for later retrieval. Its purpose is usually to allow the user of this tool to gain access to confidential information typed on the affected machine, such as a user's password or other private data. Some key loggers uses virus-, trojan-, and rootkit-like methods to remain active and hidden. However, some key loggers are used in legitimate ways and sometimes to even enhance computer security. As an example, a business might have a key logger on a computer used at a point of sale 
                                                      and data collected by the key logger could be used for catching 

                                                      employee fraud.      

session hijacking:-

Session hijacking, also known as TCP session hijacking, is a method of taking over a Web user
session by surreptitiously obtaining the session ID and masquerading as the authorized user.
Once the user's session ID has been accessed (through session prediction), the attacker can
masquerade as that user and do anything the user is authorized to do                      
                                                          on the network.

The session ID is normally stored within a cookie or URL. For most communications,

authentication procedures are carried out at set up. Session hijacking takes advantage of that

practice by intruding in real time, during a session. The intrusion may or may not be detectable,

depending on the user's level of technical knowledge and the nature of the attack. If a Web site

does not respond in the normal or expected way to user input or stops responding altogether

for an unknown reason, session hijacking is a possible cause.

Clickjacking:-

Clickjacking is a technique used by hackers or spammers to trick or cheat the users into clicking on links

or buttons that are hidden from normal view (usually links color is same as page background).

Clickjacking is possible because of a security weakness in web browsers that allows web pages to be

layered and hidden from general view. In this situation what happens is 

                                                       that You think that you are

clicking on a standard button or link, like the PLAY button or download button on an video or some stuff,

but you are really clicking on a hidden link. Since you can’t see the clickjacker’s hidden link, you have no

idea what you’re really doing. You could be downloading malware or making all your Facebook

information public without realizing it. Some good hackers make ajax keyloggers and put them as

javascripts over their fake websites and when you open them they retrieve all your passwords stored in

web browser and records whatever you type while the web browser is open and stores this information

on their servers.

There are several types of clickjacking but the most common is to hide a LIKE button under a dummy or

fake button. This technique is called Likejacking. A scammer or hacker might trick you by saying that you

like a product you’ve never heard. At first glance, likejacking sounds more annoying than harmful, but

that’s not always true. If you’re scammed for liking Mark Zukenberg, the world isn’t likely to end. But

you may be helping to spread spam or possibly sending Friends somewhere that contains malware.

Phishing:-

Phishing - is an e-mail fraud method in which the perpetrator sends out legitimate-looking email in an

attempt to gather personal and financial information from recipients. Typically, the messages appear to

come from well known and trustworthy Web sites. Web sites that are frequently spoofed by phishers

include PayPal, eBay, MSN, Yahoo, BestBuy, and America Online. A phishing expedition, like the fishing

expedition it's named for, is a speculative venture: the phisher puts the lure hoping to fool at least a few of the prey that encounter the bait.

Desktop Phising :-

Concept Behind The Hack :

Hosts file is a computer file used in an operating system to map host names to IP addresses. Host
file used to play a large role before the Domain Name System (DNS) came into existence. A
hosts file basically controls how your browser finds websites.
You can use host file to map any word or domain to an ip address or to another domain. For
example if we add
74.125.236.84 www.facebook.com
To the host file what will happen is that when you type Facebook.com in your browser it will open google.com instead of facebook.com this is because (74.125.236.84) is Google's Ip, So the browesr will take it blindly So if a attacker is abel to add his Ip address (where he Hosts thephisher page ) Victim will be redirected to the attackers phishing site
What makes this attack so successful is the victim will not Know since the URL only remains
facebook.com open google.com instead of facebook.com this is because (74.125.236.84) is Google's Ip, So

the browesr will take it blindly So if a attacker is abel to add his Ip address (where he Hosts the
phisher page ) Victim will be redirected to the attackers phishing site
What makes this attack so successful is the victim will not Know since the URL only remains
facebook.com.



Footprinting:-

The systematic and methodical footprinting of an organization enables attackers to create
a near complete profile of an organization’s security posture. Using a combination of
tools and techniques coupled with a healthy dose of patience and mind-melding,
attackers can take an unknown entity and reduce it to a specific range of domain names,
network blocks, subnets, routers, and individual IP addresses of systems directly connected to the Internet, as well as many  other details pertaining to its security posture.

Although there are many types of footprinting techniques, they are primarily aimed at
discovering information related to the following environments: Internet, intranet, remote
access, and extranet. 




Scanning:-


If footprinting is the equivalent of casing a place for information, then scanning is
equivalent to knocking on the walls to find all the doors and windows. During
footprinting, we obtained a list of IP network blocks and IP addresses through a wide
variety of techniques including whois and ARIN queries. These techniques provide the
security administrator (and hacker) valuable information about the target network (you),
including employee names and phone numbers, IP address ranges,  
                                                   DNSservers,and  mail servers. ther are  such as ping  sweeps, port scans,              
                                                   and automated discovery tools.