Ethical Hacking

● Terminology
● What is Ethical Hacking?
● Who are Ethical Hackers?
● What do Ethical Hackers do?
● Common methods
● Security tools
● Conclusion
Terminology

● Hacker: A person who enjoys learning

the details of computer systems and how
to stretch their capabilities—as opposed
to most users of computers, who prefer to
learn only the minimum amount
necessary.
Terminology

● White Hat Hacker: An ethical hacker

who breaks security but who does so for
altruistic or at least non-malicious
reasons. White hats generally have a
clearly defined code of ethics, and will
often attempt to work with a
manufacturer or owner to improve
discovered security weaknesses.
Terminology

● Black Hat Hacker: Someone who

subverts computer security without
authorization or who uses technology
(usually a computer or the Internet) for
terrorism, vandalism, credit card fraud,
identity theft, intellectual property theft,
or many other types of crime. This can
mean taking control of a remote
computer through a network, or software
cracking.
Terminology

● Cracker: A software cracker. A person

specialized in working around copy
protection mechanisms in software. Note
that software crackers are not involved in
exploiting networks, but copy protected
software.
Terminology

● Script kiddie: A pejorative term for a

computer intruder with little or no skill; a
person who simply follows directions or
uses a cook-book approach without fully
understanding the meaning of the steps
they are performing.
Terminology

● Hacktivist: is a hacker who utilizes

technology to announce a political
message. Web vandalism is not
necessarily hacktivism.
What is Ethical Hacking?

● Organizations came to realize that one of

the best ways to evaluate the intruder
threat to their interests would be to have
independent computer security
professionals attempt to break into their
computer systems.
What is Ethical Hacking?

● Ethical hackers would employ the same

tools and techniques as the intruders, but
they would neither damage the target
systems nor steal information. Instead
they would evaluate the target systems
security and report back to the owners
with the vulnerabilities they found and
instructions for how to remedy them.
Who are Ethical Hackers?

● Skilled: Ethical hackers typically have

very strong programming and computer
networking skills and have been in the
computer and networking business for
several years.
● Knowledgeable: Hardware and
software.
● Trustworthy
What do Ethical Hackers do?

An ethical hacker’s evaluation of a

system’s security seeks answers to these
basic questions:
● What can an intruder see on the target
systems?
● What can an intruder do with that
information?
● Does anyone at the target notice the
intruder's attempts or successes?
What do Ethical Hackers do?

● What are you trying to protect?

● How much time, effort, and money are
you willing to expend to obtain adequate
protection?
Common methods

There are several recurring tools of the

trade used by computer criminals and
security experts:
● Security exploit: A prepared application
that takes advantage of a known
weakness.
● Packet sniffer: An application that
captures TCP/IP data packets, which can
maliciously be used to capture passwords
and other data while it is in transit either
within the computer or over the network.
Common methods

● Rootkit: A toolkit for hiding the fact that

a computer's security has been
compromised. Root kits 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.
Common methods

● Social Engineering: Convincing other

people to provide some form of
information about a system, often under
false premises. A blatant example would
be asking someone for their password or
account possibly over a beer or by posing
as someone else. A more subtle example
would be asking for promotional material
or technical references about a
company's systems, possibly posing as a
journalist.
Common methods

● Trojan horse: These are programs

designed so that they seem to do or be
one thing, such as a legitimate software,
but actually are or do another. They are
not necessarily malicious programs. A
trojan horse can be used to set up a back
door in a computer system so that the
intruder can return later and gain access.
Viruses that fool a user into downloading
and/or executing them by pretending to
be useful applications are also sometimes
called trojan horses.
Common methods

● Vulnerability scanner: 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 it's version
number.
Common methods

● Worm: Like a virus, a worm is also a self-

replicating program. The difference
between a virus and a worm is that a
worm does not create multiple copies of
itself on one system: it propagates
through computer networks.
Security tools

● Firewall: a piece of hardware and/or

software which functions in a networked
environment to prevent some
communications forbidden by the security
policy.
● Intrusion Detection System (IDS):
generally detects unwanted
manipulations to systems. The
manipulations may take the form of
attacks by skilled malicious hackers, or
Script kiddies using automated tools.
Security tools

● Intrusion Prevention System (IPS): a

computer security device that exercises
access control to protect computers from
exploitation. Intrusion prevention
technology is considered by some to be
an extension of intrusion detection (IDS)
technology but it is actually another form
of access control, like an application layer
firewall. The latest Next Generation
Firewalls leverage their existing deep
packet inspection engine by sharing this
functionality with an IPS.
Security tools

● Anti-virus: software consists of

computer programs that attempt to
identify, thwart and eliminate computer
viruses and other malicious software
(malware).
● Encryption: used to protect your
message from the eyes of others.
● Authorization: restricts access to a
computer to group of users through the
use of authentication systems.
Security tools

● System Integrity Verifiers: Systems

that monitor system integrity to detect
when critical components have changed,
such as when backdoors have been
added to system files.
Security tools

● Honeypot: a trap set to detect, deflect

or in some manner counteract attempts
at unauthorized use of information
systems. Generally it consists of a
computer, data or a network site that
appears to be part of a network but which
is actually isolated, (un)protected and
monitored, and which seems to contain
information or a resource that would be of
value to attackers.
Conclusion

If you want to stop hackers from invading

your network, first you've got to invade
their minds.