Skip to main content

Ethical Hacking - Pen Testing

Penetration Testing is a method that many companies follow in order to minimize their security breaches. This is a controlled way of hiring a professional who will try to hack your system and show you the loopholes that you should fix.
Before doing a penetration test, it is mandatory to have an agreement that will explicitly mention the following parameters −
  • what will be the time of penetration test,
  • where will be the IP source of the attack, and
  • what will be the penetration fields of the system.
Penetration testing is conducted by professional ethical hackers who mainly use commercial, open-source tools, automate tools and manual checks. There are no restrictions; the most important objective here is to uncover as many security flaws as possible.

Types of Penetration Testing

We have five types of penetration testing −
  • Black Box − Here, the ethical hacker doesn’t have any information regarding the infrastructure or the network of the organization that he is trying to penetrate. In black-box penetration testing, the hacker tries to find the information by his own means.
  • Grey Box − It is a type of penetration testing where the ethical hacker has a partial knowledge of the infrastructure, like its domain name server.
  • White Box − In white-box penetration testing, the ethical hacker is provided with all the necessary information about the infrastructure and the network of the organization that he needs to penetrate.
  • External Penetration Testing − This type of penetration testing mainly focuses on network infrastructure or servers and their software operating under the infrastructure. In this case, the ethical hacker tries the attack using public networks through the Internet. The hacker attempts to hack the company infrastructure by attacking their webpages, webservers, public DNS servers, etc.
  • Internal Penetration Testing − In this type of penetration testing, the ethical hacker is inside the network of the company and conducts his tests from there.
Penetration testing can also cause problems such as system malfunctioning, system crashing, or data loss. Therefore, a company should take calculated risks before going ahead with penetration testing. The risk is calculated as follows and it is a management risk.
RISK = Threat × Vulnerability

Example

You have an online e-commerce website that is in production. You want to do a penetration testing before making it live. Here, you have to weigh the pros and cons first. If you go ahead with penetration testing, it might cause interruption of service. On the contrary, if you do not wish to perform a penetration testing, then you can run the risk of having an unpatched vulnerability that will remain as a threat all the time.
Before doing a penetration test, it is recommended that you put down the scope of the project in writing. You should be clear about what is going to be tested. For example −
  • Your company has a VPN or any other remote access techniques and you want to test that particular point.
  • Your application has webservers with databases, so you might want to get it tested for SQL injection attacks which is one of the most crucial tests on a webserver. In addition, you can check if your webserver is immune to DoS attacks.

Quick Tips

Before going ahead with a penetration test, you should keep the following points in mind −
  • First understand your requirements and evaluate all the risks.
  • Hire a certified person to conduct penetration test because they are trained to apply all the possible methods and techniques to uncover possible loopholes in a network or web application.
  • Always sign an agreement before doing a penetration test.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

IMPORTANCE AND ADVANTAGES OF SIWES

STUDENTS INDUSTRIAL WORK EXPERIENCE SCHEME (SIWES) The Industrial Training/Students Industrial Work Experience Scheme, IT/SIWES is a new Directorate under the Vice-Chancellor’s Office.  It was established on 20th April, 2012 The Students Industrial Work Experience Scheme (SIWES) is a skills training programme designed to expose and prepare students of universities and other tertiary institutions for the Industrial Work situation they are likely to meet after graduation.  It is also a planned and structured programme based on stated and specific career objectives which are geared towards developing the occupational competencies of participants (Mafe, 2009).  Consequently, the SIWES programme is a compulsory graduation requirement for all Nigerian university students offering certain courses. The Students Industrial Work Experience Scheme (SIWES), is the accepted training pro...

Hack Instagram Account with ighack

Ighack is a secure Instagram account hacking application that allows you to hack Instagram password free. The best part of the application is that it does not require any survey or download. It is available free on the internet. I addition to being free to use, this app is compatible with every device. The application has a reputation of being authentic and untraceable. Let us look into the procedure needed to follow for hacking Instagram passwords. Step 1: Visit the website ighack.net and click on ‘Start Hack’ option. Step 2: Enter the user name of the target’s Instagram account when the system asks you to do so and click the ‘Hack’ button. Step 3: Allow the application to do the rest. The ighack server establishes contact with Instagram server and searches for the password in the Instagram database by matching the username ID. Step 4: On extraction of the data, the installed software program automatically decrypts the data. Step 5: The system delivers the password to...

How to Crack a Password

What is Password Cracking? Password cracking is the process of attempting to gain Unauthorized access to restricted systems using common passwords or algorithms that guess passwords. In other words, it’s an art of obtaining the correct password that gives access to a system protected by an authentication method. Password cracking employs a number of techniques to achieve its goals. The cracking process can involve either comparing stored passwords against word list or use algorithms to generate passwords that match In this Tutorial, we will introduce you to the common password cracking techniques and the countermeasures you can implement to protect systems against such attacks. Topics covered in this tutorial What is password strength? Password cracking techniques Password Cracking Tools Password Cracking Counter Measures Hacking Assignment: Hack Now! What is password strength? Password strength is the measure of a password’s efficiency to resist password crackin...