Penetration Testing Ethical Hacking
Astonishingly, Penetration Tester Ethical Hackers, or Ethical Hackers, use a wide variety of ethical hacking tools. Indeed! The principal goal is to improve system protection by finding and fixing vulnerabilities before cyber criminals can take advantage of them.
Either using the best operating system for hacking, such as Kali Linux, or software applications that can be used on smartphones, such as Termux, these security professionals are very important for protecting against constant challenges in the cyber world.
Penetration Testing
“Pen Tests,” or penetration testing, simulate security breaches.
Pen testers simulate the actions of hackers who infiltrate enterprise networks. No, pen testers don’t cause harm. Their use of test findings plays a crucial role in protecting the company from cybercriminals.
Pen testing consists of three essential steps:
1. Exploration
The reconnaissance step entails penetration testers collecting valuable information about the company’s PCs, mobile devices, online applications, web servers, and various other assets.
Pen testers analyse the network’s footprint, a process known as “foot printing”. Pen testers conduct both manual and automatic reconnaissance. They might explore workers’ social media and GitHub profiles for valuable insights.
Nmap can be utilized to scan for open ports, while Wireshark serves as a tool for analysing network traffic.
Workers might be drawn into disclosing sensitive information through social engineering tactics if the company permits it.
2. Preparing for an Attack
Once they have understood the network’s structure and identified its weaknesses, penetration testers proceed to exploit it.
Depending on the exam, penetration testers may explore various attack methods.
Here are some frequently assessed attacks:
SQL injections involve penetration testers inserting harmful code into input fields to gain access to sensitive information from websites and applications.
Cross-site scripting involves penetration testers injecting malware into a company’s websites.
Denial-of-service attacks occur when penetration testers inundate servers, applications, and various network resources with excessive traffic, aiming to disrupt their functionality.
Social engineering involves pen testers using techniques such as phishing, baiting, pretexting, and more to trick employees into undermining network security.
Pen testers investigate the ways in which hackers could take advantage of vulnerabilities and manoeuvre through the network during an attack.
They discover the types of data and assets that hackers can reach. They also evaluate security techniques to recognize or avert them.
Following an attack, penetration testers carefully erase their footprints.
It has two important roles.
- It illustrates the ways in which hackers conceal themselves within networks.
- It stops malicious hackers from secretly tracking ethical hackers within the system.
3. Reporting
Pen testers document their hacking activities.
They subsequently provide a report to the information security team detailing the vulnerabilities they exploited, the assets and data they accessed, and the methods they used to evade security measures.
Furthermore, ethical hackers recommend focusing on and addressing these issues.
- Evaluations of susceptibility
Vulnerability assessment refers to the appraisal of systems to the end of identifying flaws without necessarily exploiting them.
White-hat hackers use both manual and automated methods to accurately detect, analyse, and prioritize vulnerabilities within systems.
Their reports are passed on to the organization.Â
- Examination of malware
Certain ethical hackers delve into the analysis of ransomware and malware.
They investigate new malware releases to comprehend their operations and inform organizations and information security experts.
- Oversee and mitigate potential challenges
Ethical hackers can play a crucial role in managing strategic risk.
They have the ability to identify emerging threats, evaluate their impact on security, and support the organization in developing effective solutions.
Advantages of Ethical Hacking
Ethical hacking is a legitimate approach that can be applied by cybersecurity professionals to check the security of enterprise networks.
At the same time, the methods may be so different that some of their developers are particular in this case.
This process helps organizations identify and address the most critical issues. Ethical hackers can uncover insights that corporate security experts might miss.
Ethical hackers encounter various challenges such as firewalls, cryptographic algorithms, IDSs, XDRs, and other security measures. Prior to experiencing a data breach, the organization understands how these measures operate and identifies their shortcomings.
Continuing the story, let’s explore a few more tools that come handy, in this piece.
Web Application Hacking Tools
Ethical hackers use certain tools specifically designed to test the security of web applications in order to make them safe:
- Burp Suite: This is a platform that comes with all the tools necessary to execute web application security testing.
It has a web spider, a web scanner, and a proxy server, among others.
- ZAP (Zed Attack Proxy): A reliable and effective tool that is a fantastic use-case for ethical hacking to uncover security holes in web applications during the development and testing phase.
The term “wireless hacking tools” refers to telecom companies that provide essential wireless hacking tools for ethical hackers.
- Aircrack-boss: This is a six-week course (including lectures, discussions, and labs) for security professionals who want to thoroughly understand the use of WPA and other cracking tools used to assess network security and identify their vulnerabilities.
Social Engineering Tools (SET)
We define social engineering as an attack path that uses human interaction to gain illegal access to technical systems.
Social engineering tools aim to assist ethical hackers in simulating these attacks.
SET (Social-Engineer Toolkit): A specially developed set of social engineering tools with features for phishing, credential harvesting, and more.
Ethical Hacking Apps
As we can see, the number of hacking apps increases as the number of smartphones and tablets increases.
The best options for both the user and the attacker are Air Tag and Gainroot, both of which are compatible with the same network.
With the help of these apps, users can get a location signal for the other network from the same smartphone.
Even they can use interception testing to find out the weak points of the other device and detection apps to detect nearby networks, and then test them.
They can use the discovery of vulnerabilities in intercepting testing to test other networks with their detection apps.
- Termux: is a tool that hackers can use on Android devices to run Linux commands and tools. It gives them time to detect vulnerabilities prior to a breach.
- AndroRAT: is an open-source application that allows hackers to gain access to the devices of targeted Android users.
Usually, people use this tool to break into mobile devices and assess their security.
The Best Operating Systems for Hacking
There are so-called penetration testing operating systems that offer lots of built-in tools and programs:
Kali Linux: Kali is the choice of hackers from all over the world.
It is one of the most ingenious Linux distros for security bonding, and it provides all the solutions for the verification of the security and the investigation of the same.
Parrot OS: A faster, lightly Debian-based OS that has a full suite of penetration testing tools, a full array of open-source projects, as well as private and protected options.
Techniques Used by Penetration Testers
These days, white-hat hackers use various techniques such as penetration testing.
- SQL Injection: This is how hackers pass standard authorization by injecting malicious SQL code into a file to attack web applications.
- Cross-Site Scripting (XSS): This may happen when a code is inserted into a known and trustworthy website that the user doesn’t even know is harmful.
Then a hacker discovers the opportunity to circumvent the security measures, and as a result, whoever opens the site faces the risk of uncertainty.
- Buffer Overflow: This type of software attack occurs when hackers surpass the buffers, which the system then processes.
The attack either results in the system crashing or allows the hackers to carry out further attacks.
The Role of Penetration Testers
Fixing (or ethical hacking) testers complete detailed security checks, publish their results, and provide a security breach mitigation plan.
A penetration tester should ensure that the boundaries of their tasks are strictly, or legally supported, within the legal framework.
By doing this, they establish trust in the security of the systems they are testing.
Legal and Ethical Aspects
Ethical hackers are authorized based on the law and rights; they are professionals who must adhere to a clear agreement when dealing with computers.
Therefore, according to the first law, hackers to find out illegal vulnerabilities; they must first obtain the owner’s computer-access permission.
Acting as soon as they find out their weaknesses, the hackers immediately install the protection instead of breaking the software’s security.
Future Trends in Ethical Hacking
Technology and its corresponding hacker tools are constantly changing.
Innovations such as behavioral prediction through artificial intelligence and machine learning, automated vulnerability testing tool improvement, and enhanced hardware and software security are the biggest challenges.
Summing it up,
In the digital age, companies have adopted ethical hacking as a standard technique to safeguard their data and systems from any untoward incidents.
With the help of various tool Pen-testers use various tools and methods to remediate identified vulnerabilities, thereby stopping exploiter, technology will continue to advance with more ethical practices, as resolving these issues without the proper tools will be challenging, leading to a rise in the strength and sophistication of cybercriminals.
If you’re looking for an Ethical Hacking Course or intend to learn about Threat Intelligence or a Cybersecurity online certification course, register now at 3.0 University.
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