Ethical Hacking – Need, Types, Applications and Problems

The word hacking is defined as an illegal use of the other’s computer system or the network resources. Hacker is the term which is formerly meant for the skillful programmer. The word hacker refers to the names of the persons who enjoys the work in learning the details of the computer systems and stretch the capabilities from the system. The system of hacking describes the fast improvement in the new programs that make the codes for the providing a better security to the system with more efficiency. The word cracker also belongs to the same field it make use of the hacking skills for the unlawful purposes like email id, intruding into other’s system. Hacking is of different types such as back door hacking, viruses and worms, Trojan horses, Denial of Services, anarchists, crackers, kiddies and ethical hacking. In the types of hacking system one of the most common hacking is ethical hacking.

Ethical Hacking

Ethical Hacking Services

Ethical hacking is an emerging tools used by most of the organizations for testing network security. The security risks and vulnerabilities in a network can be recognized with the help of ethical hacking.  Ethical hacking is defined as the services that provides the securities for the customer’s networks, information assets and identifies the vulnerabilities to maintain the reputation of the corporate sectors before it exploit the company. This type of the hacking system provides the high securities to the customer’s methodologies and techniques to yield high qualities of infrastructures. The ethical hacking system includes some of the service like:

  1. Application Testing:  This is an uncover design or the logic flaws which result in the compromising with the unauthorized accessing of the systems, networks, applications or the information regarding the systems. This application testing is used for investigating and identifying the extent and the criticality of the problems exposure to the thick client (Java) and thin client (web browsers) applications. This application testing includes the services like client-side application testing and web application testing’s. The client-side application testing is the process of developing the software that is used for the measuring the integrated security into the client software constituents. In this system this testing application is based on the gathering of the information by observer using the reverse engineering system.
  2. War Dialing:  This is one of the services that are provided by ethical hacking. War dialing is a method of dialing a modem number to identify open modem connection that supplies access in a remote way to a network for targeting a particular system. This word is originated from the day the when the internet has come into the existence in most of the companies. This follows the method of scanning to find the strength of the network connection. The tools of War dialing work on the concept that organizations do not pay attention to dial-in ports like they do towards the firewalls.
  3. Network Testing:  The networking testing services of the ethical hacking provides the information on the exposures of the network, services, and solutions on the convergence, protocols and system devices including the virtual private network technologies. This testing process includes a number of constitutes in external and internal devices. It also analyzes the applications of the voice over Internet protocol within the environment of the organization. The main goal of the network testing application is to make obvious demonstration of the political effects on its development. By making use of this application into the organization, it provides a complete enlightenment to the work for determining the result in the organization.
  4. Wireless Security:  Wireless security services measures the security in the available architecture to provide a guidelines to ensure the system integrity and accessibility of the resources. The working of wireless security is based on the three phases. In the first phase of the operation it identifies the activeness of the wireless networks. The team of the ethical hacking demonstrates the exposure to the attackers with the space in the wireless network. In the seconds phase of this system it implements a normal users to evaluate the measures of the security that secures the infrastructures of the organization to control the accessing of the devices. During the third phase the team will try to utilize the discovered threats to gain access on other networks. This provides the security in wireless local area network, virtual private network, intrusion detection system and wireless public key infrastructure.
  5. System Hardening:  The system hardening stresses on the network vicinity. Security is the prime factor that determines the level of integrity of the information and resources used in the computing. Effective deployment of the security controls unauthorized, accidental disruption if resources in information technology. The system hardening assessment is complemented in three phases. The ethical hacking team will analyze the network to identify the loop holes in security updates and other frequent security defects. Scanning of the remote access devices is done for finding out the vulnerabilities. The configuration vulnerabilities and missing security updates are determined in the initial phase. In the second step the host operating system is examined to determine the services available for remote users and their level of impact. All the TCP/IP services and also the Telnet, FTP, Send-mail, DNS and others are tested. The packet fragmenting and loose source routing are used in an attempt to bypass filtering routers and firewalls. The last phase is complicated as the team uses the information gathered from the first two steps to mine the weaknesses and threats that were identified to gain access to the host system. Before the start of the three steps the boundaries for actions and events are determined. Hence from the above context it can be stated that ethical hacking is a methodology that is used for gathering the information on the hacker. The ethical hacker is the expert who is hired by an organization to solve the problems related to hacking in their network and computer system.

Need for Ethical Hacking

The process of employing someone to hack ones company is ethical hacking. Ethical hacking is one of the tools that are used to judge the security programs of the organizations. It is also referred as penetrating testing, red teaming, intrusion testing, vulnerability and even security judgments. Each one these has different meanings in different countries. Hacking is also described as new development of the existing programs, software and code. It makes them better and more efficient. Ethical hacker can know the details of computer while hacking and become the security professional. It involves in foot-printing, scanning, tacking all the secured information. Ethical means a philosophy with morality. Hackers hack systems to detect dangerous, unauthorized access and misuse. Threat and vulnerability are the two dangers the hacker has to face. The hacking report must be confidential as it should face the organizations security risks. If this goes wrong in any way the organization results in fatal, penalties and loss. For example: computer crime is done by misuse of their hacking skills. The need to hack is for catching the thief. Ethical hacking is the correct method to make your computers work properly. Ethical hacker needs higher level skills compared to penetration testing. Penetration testing is same as ethical hacking but the hacker uses the penetrating tools and tests the security danger. Ethical hacking is known as “White Hat”. It tests both the security and protective issues whereas penetrating test mainly leads with the security issues. Some of the websites and companies offer the training, but they cannot be created they are self-made. Various types of testing need different types of software’s and tools. Game freaks use hacking technology in order to win the game. Hackers will discover many ways to hack like trial and error method, operating systems, online and determining the threats. Ethical hacking is done by hackers on behalf of the owners, and in normal hacking they use their skills for personal use. Cyber terrorism includes common hacking techniques such like viruses, email bombs and natural disasters. Thus ethical hacking is done by hackers on owner’s request. Mainly this is seen in corporate companies and organizations. Ethical hacking techniques are used for game cheat codes, hacking accounts and other for good result. Majorly used for fight against cyber terrorism and to take preventive action on hackers

Types of Ethical Hacking

Ethical hackers use various methods for breaking the security system in the organizations in the period of cyber attack. Various types of ethical hacks are:

  1. Remote Network:  This process in especially utilized to recognize the attacks that are causing among the internet. Usually the ethical hacker always tries to identify the default and proxy information in the networks some of then are firewalls, proxy etc.
  2. Remote dial up network:  Remote dial up network hack identify and try to protest from the attack that is causing among the client modern pool. For finding the open system the organizations will make use of the method called war dialing for the representative dialing. Open system is one of the examples for this type of attacks.
  3. Local Network:  local network hack is the process which is used to access the illegal information by making use of someone with physical access gaining through the local network. To start on this procedure the ethical hacker should ready to access the local network directly.
  4. Stolen Equipment:  By making use of the stolen equipment hack it is easy to identify the information of the thefts such as the laptops etc. the information secured by the owner of the laptop can be identified. Information like username, password and the security settings that are in the equipment are encoded by stealing the laptop.
  5. Social engineering:  A social engineering attack is the process which is used to check the reliability of the organization; this can be done by making use of the telecommunication or face to face communication by collecting the data which can be used in the attacks. This method is especially utilized to know the security information that is used in the organizations.
  6. Physical Entry:  This Physical entry organization is used in the organizations to control the attacks that are obtained through the physical premises. By using the physical entire the ethical hacker can increase and can produce virus and other Trojans directly onto the network.
  7. Application network:  the logic flaws present in the applications may result to the illegal access of the network and even in the application and the information that is provided in the applications.
  8. Network testing:  In this process it mainly observes the unsafe data that is present in the internal and the external network, not only in the particular network also in the devices and including the virtual private network technologies
  9. Wireless network testing:  In this process the wireless network reduces the network liability to the attacker by using the radio access to the given wireless network space.
  10. Code review:  This process will observe the source code which is in the part of the verification system and will recognize the strengths and the weakness of the modules that are in the software.
  11. War dialing: It simply identifies the default information that is observed in the modem which is very dangerous to the corporate organizations.

Applications  of Ethical Hacking

Ethical hacking is nothing but the one which performs the hacks as security tests for their systems. Ethical hacking can be used in many applications in case of web applications which are often beaten down. This generally includes Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) and Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) applications are most frequently attacked because most of the firewalls and other security are things has complete access to these programs from the Internet. Malicious software includes viruses and Trojan horses which take down the system. Spam is a junk e-mail which causes violent and needless disturbance on system and storage space and carry the virus, so ethical hacking helps to reveal such attacks against in computer systems and provides the security of the system. The main application of this is to provide the security on wireless infrastructure which is the main purpose of present business organization. Ethical hacking has become main stream in organizations which are wishing to test their intellectual and technical courage against the underworld. Ethical hacking plays important role in providing security. Resources are the computer related services that performs the tasks on behalf of user. In Ethical hacking the resources are the core services, objects code etc. The ethical hacking has advantages of gaining access to an organizations network and information systems. This provides the security in the area of Information technology called as Infosec. This provides security to the high level attacks such as viruses and traffic trough a firewall. This has been providing the security for various applications which are even bypassing the firewalls, Intrusion-detection systems and antivirus software. This includes hacking specific applications including coverage of e-mails systems, instant messaging and VOIP (voice over IP). The resources i.e. devices, systems, and applications that are generally used while performing the hacking process are Routers, Firewalls, Network infrastructure as a whole, wireless access points and bridges, web application and database servers, E-mail and file servers, workstations, laptops and tablet PCs, Mobile devices, client and server operating systems, client and server applications . Ethical hacking tests both the safety and the security issues of the programs. Hence from the above context it can be stated as the ethical hacking is important in the present scenario as providing security is very important now a day. This is very important in web applications as the hacking can be easily done in this case.

Problems  of Ethical Hacking

Ethical hacking is the backbone of network security. The basic problems with this is trustworthiness of the Ethical hacker because let’s take an example if a person has been appointed to do Ethical hacking, to provide security for the bank financial issues if the person is not trust to believe this is not safe as the person only considered as thief. Sometimes the big organizations face any problem like there passwords has been hack, this case hiring professionals is very expensive and the organization need to spend a lot on this. Ethical hacking is just the security to the problem it is not the ultimate solution to it. Ethical hacking report must be kept confidential because they highlight the organizations security risks and attacks. If this document has been falls into the wrong hand the result would be very disastrous for the organization, the main drawback here is the entire information of the organization will be in hands of wrong person and which leads to the loss of the company. Ethical hacking generally involves breaking down the computer applications and by collecting specific information from the target the ethical hacker can successful to access the information and can reveal it. This results in that highly sensitive information about the targets security capabilities is collected and maintained far away from the owner’s control. If this information fall into wrong hands results in real attack on the company and another problem is if the information is leaked to the public or stockholders, the business will be in risk, which results in all types of disasters, including negative character by media, loss of customers and legal consequences. Ethical hacking use tools while it performing the activity, if the methods and tools are used incorrectly they cause damage. Hence from the above context it can be stated as Ethical hacking provides security but behind that it provides the disadvantages like the Ethical hacker should be trusted by the organization or business and in case sometimes highly professionals may cost the organization very much so that company has to provide from the unplanned budget and if it goes into the wrong persons hand the business will be in danger and loss of the organization will takes place.

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