Methodology of CEH Hacking
In preparation for hacking a system, attackers follow a particular methodology. They first obtain information during the foot printing, scanning, and enumeration phases, which they then use to take advantage of the target system.
There are three steps within the CEH Hacking Methodology (CHM):
Gaining Access:-
Involves gaining access to low-privileged user accounts by cracking passwords through techniques like brute-forcing, password guessing, and social engineering, then escalating their privileges to administrative levels, to perform a protected operation.
Maintaining Access:-
After successfully gaining access to the target system, attackers work to keep up high levels of access to perform malicious activities like executing malicious applications and stealing, hiding, or tampering with sensitive system files.
Clearing Logs:-
To maintain future system access, attackers plan to avoid recognition by legitimate system users. to stay undetected, attackers wipe out the entries like their activities within the system log, thus avoiding detection by users. System Hacking Goals The intent of each criminal is to realize a particular goal.
Gaining Access:-
In system hacking, the attacker first tries to realize access to a target system using information obtained and loopholes found within the system's access control mechanism, Once attackers achieve gaining access to the system, they're liberal to perform malicious activities like stealing sensitive data, implementing a sniffer to capture network traffic, and infecting.
Escalating Privileges:-
After gaining access to a system employing a low-privileged normal user account, attackers may then attempt to increase their administrator privileges to perform protected system operations, in order that they will proceed to following level of the system hacking phase: to execute applications. Attackers exploit known system vulnerabilities to escalate user privileges.
Executing Applications:-
Once attackers have administrator privileges, they plan to install malicious programs like Trojans, Backdoor, Rootkits, and Key loggers, which grant them remote system access, thereby enabling them to execute malicious codes remotely. Installing Rootkits allows them to realize access at the OS level to perform malicious activities. To take care of access to be used at a later date, they'll install Backdoor.
Hiding Files:-
Attackers use Rootkits and stenography techniques to aim to cover the malicious files they install on the system, and thus their activities.
Covering Tracks:-
To remain undetected, it's important for attackers to erase all evidence of security compromise from the system. To realize this, they could modify or delete logs within the system using certain log-wiping utilities, thus removing all evidence of their presence.
Cracking Passwords
As discussed earlier, CHM involves various steps attackers follow to hack systems. The following section discusses these steps in greater detail. The first step, password cracking, discusses different tools and techniques attackers use to crack password on the target system.
Password Cracking
Password cracking is that the process of recovering passwords from the info transmitted by a computing system or stored in it the aim of password cracking could be to assist a user recover a forgotten or lost password, as a precautions by system administrators to see for easily breakable passwords, or an attacker can use this process to realize unauthorized system access. Flacking often begins with password cracking attempts.
A password may be a key piece of data necessary to access a system. Consequently, most attackers use password cracking techniques to realize unauthorized access.
An attacker may either crack a password manually by guessing it, or use automated tools and techniques like a dictionary or a brute-force method. Most password cracking techniques are successful due to weak or easily guessable passwords.