Hacking Basics: Short Overview: A Short Breadth
Audience: Ethical Hackers, Wanna be security researchers, interested to know the basics of Security
Objective: Identify the key hacking concepts. Just the names primarily.
key Topics: Password Cracking, Keyloggers, Trojans, Viruses, Worms, Rootkits, Social Engineering, Privilege Escalation, Denial of service attack, Botnet, Alternate data streams, Steganography, Covering tracks.
Password Cracking Techniques that hackers use or can be used as part of ethical hacking:
Dictionary Attack, Brute Force Attack (uses combination of letters, digits, esp. characters - not dictionary words), Hybrid Attack (on top of dictionary attack such as world123), Syllable Attack (brute force attack on top of dictionary attack, combine dictionary and brute force), Rule based attack (when some hints are known then use rules to create passwords to use to crack), Rainbow Table Attack (uses pre-generated hashes of combinations/permutations of a character set), distributed password attack (uses multiple systems to crack the password), non-technical attack (social engineering, shoulder surfing to see typing)
Keyloggers: Used to steal passwords such as BIOS Embedded (sits in the BIOS), keylogger keyboard (replace keyboard with keyboards with internal memory), External Keyloggers (fits the PS/2, serial keyboard port to intercept), Software keyloggers (most common, installed in the target system)
Trojans: Hides inside trust-able applications can give the attacker full access to the system, can steal passwords and any other data. Two types: Overt channel (uses a genuine channel to communicate), Covert Channel (uses back/secret door)
Types of Trojans: Command shelf Trojans (gives command line access to the attacker), Document Trojans (hides inside word or pdf files), email trojans (attacker sends commands through email messages ), Botnet Trojans (uses bots to attack, for DOS attacks bots are usually used)
Viruses: A malicious program itself. The life-cycle of a virus: design/development, infection and replication (replicates itself on the target system to attack), detection (can be detected by anti-virus software), anti-virus signature development, Eradication
Types of Viruses: System/boot virus, File virus, Macro Virus (can be word and excel macro), Polymorphic virus (change code and behaviors of itself).
Computer Worms: Similar to virus however they self-replicate themselves aggressively and try to attack aggressively to infect as many systems as possible (and as quickly as possible)
Rootkits:
Affect the operating system, changes the kernels. hard to remove. Changes system level code to remain undetected by anti-virus software.
About Antivirus software: Not all anti-virus software can detect all viruses. VirusTotal a service scans submitted files using multiple anti-virus software to detect viruses.
Social Engineering: Deceptive art to engage in communication with others to collect sensitive/valuable information Such as the CRA scam, Lottery winner scam. Steps of Social Engineering: information gathering, choose the victim, establish trust, exploit the relationship.
Types of Social Engineering: Human based, computer based, mobile based
Privilege Escalation: First gets access to the system that can be a basic access. then tries to increase privileges that can be by using programming, or utilizing misconfiguration in the system.
DOS Attack: Overwhelms the system resources so that even legitimate users cannot get access or use the system and services.
Botnet: Can be used for DOS attacks. A Botnet is a group of systems that work together to shut the target system down. the botnet is controlled by the attackers.
Alternate Data Streams: Data attached to a file. The attachment is invisible to the user. Such as hidden.txt file (will be hidden and will gwt data) can be attached to file.txt (will be visible). StreamArmor application can detect such hidden files.
Steganography: techniques where data is hidden inside messages/data. Only the related parties will have keys to see the hidden data. Example purpose: Copy prevention, Hiding meta-data, Covert communication, Authenticity testing.
Covering Tricks:
Covering Tricks: Attacker after attacking the target systems and after collecting information, can try to clear all traces. Clearing might involve: clear browser cache, remove all files it created, clear audit and event logs, close open ports, stop the service processes, restore the registry, delete user accounts it created, create temp files.
Cleaner Programs: CCCleaner, File Shredder
References: Sagar Ajay, CEH, Apress
Sayed Ahmed
Linkedin: https://ca.linkedin.com/in/sayedjustetc
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