How to perform remote hack – Quick overview

Another work to help my friend with his white paper. I am including overview because each topic can elaborate in long epic. I like to add topics as it gives me chance to post atomic topics later. I will surely come with the elaborate post for each atomic topic.

Remote hacking is the process of entering a target system remotely by using the advantage of vulnerability.

Remote Hacking Steps:

1. Information Gathering / Foot Printing
2. Port Scanning
3. OS Fingerprinting
4. Banner Grabbing
5. Vulnerability Assessment
6. Search & Build Exploit
7. Attack
8. Maintaining Access
9. Covering Tracks

A description of the various remote hacking steps is given below:

1. Information Gathering / Foot Printing: In this step, maximum details of the target host are searched and gathered. It is a very important part of remote hacking because more attacks can be performed by a hacker when he has more information about the target system. Information gathering is done with the help of the following steps:
   • Find the company details including the URL and IP address.
   • Use Google or other search engines for more information from different websites.
   • Find out the information about the target domain with the help of the whois command.
   • Find out the physical location of the victim (use www.ipmango.com)
2. Port Scanning: Port is a medium of communication between two computers and every service on a host is identified by a unique 16-bit number called a port.
   

   Port Number	Service
   7	Ping
   21	File Transfer Protocol (FTP)
   23	Telnet
   25	SMTP (Mail)
   43	WHOIS
   53	DNS
   80	HTTP
   110	POP3 (Mail Access)
   513	Rlogin
   8080	Proxy

   Port scanning is the first basic step to get the details of open ports on the target system. Port scanning is used to find a hackable server with a hole or vulnerability.

   A port scanner is a piece of software designed to search a network host for open ports. This is often used by administrators to check the security of their networks and by hackers to identify running services on a host with the view to compromising it. Port scanning is used to find the open ports, so that it is possible to search exploits related to that service and application.

   Some examples of port scanners are Nmap, Hping2, and Superscan.

3. OS Fingerprinting: OS (Operating System) Fingerprinting is a process to find out a victim’s operating system (Windows, Linux, UNIX).

   Tools: Nmap, NetScanTools Pro, P0f.

4. Banner Grabbing: Banner grabbing is an attack to find the brand and/or version of an operating system or application.

   OS Fingerprinting and Banner Grabbing are a part of port scanning.

5. Vulnerability Assessment: A vulnerability assessment is the process of identifying, quantifying, and prioritizing (or ranking) the vulnerabilities in a system. Examples of systems for which vulnerability assessments are performed for include, but are not limited to, nuclear power plants, information technology systems, energy supply systems, water supply systems, transportation systems, and communication systems.

   Vulnerability is the most reliable weakness that any programming code faces. These programming code may be buffer overflow, xss, sql injection, etc., and an exploit is a piece of malware code that takes advantage of a newly announced vulnerability in a software application, usually the operating system or a Web server.

   Vulnerability + Exploit = Hacking on remote machine

   Important Tools: Xcobra, NTOSpider, Nikto, Privoxy, Samurai, SPIKE Proxy, Nessus.

6. Search & Build Exploit: Information on vulnerability can be found with help of vulnerability archive sites.

   For exploit and final attack, download the source code format from the sites that can provide them. Some of the sites that can be used for downloading can be Microsoft, Adobe, or Mozilla.

7. Attack: In this step of Remote hacking, try to get reverse shell by launching the attack on a remote system.
8. Maintaining Access: A root kit or Trojan virus is placed for future remote access on the target system.
9. Covering Tracks: Covering Tracks is the last and important step of remote hacking, which includes the deletion of all logs on the remote system. In Linux or UNIX, all entries of the /var folder need to be deleted, and if it is a Windows operating system, all events and logs are deleted. This step is used by hackers to keep their identity anonymous.

Watch this video for Banner Grabbing in Linux (Back Track)……..