CEH 6-System Hacking

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What is System Hacking?

 Disclaimer: The articles provided on HackWithV is purely for informational and educational purpose only, and for those who are willing and curious to know & learn about Ethical Hacking, Security and Penetration Testing. Anytime the word "Hacking" that is used on this site shall be regarded as Ethical Hacking.

 Metasploit

  • Metasploit is a Framework.
  • It used for developing and executing exploit code against a remote target system. 
  • Metasploit Framework contains following modules
  1. Exploits
  2. Encoders
  3. Payloads
  4. Post
  5. Auxiliary
  6. Nop’s

Components of the Metasploit:

  • Msfconsole
  • Msfvenom
  • Armitage

1. Exploit

  • Exploits can help gain superuser-level access to a computer system.
  • Hackers manage to gain low-level access, then they try to escalate privileges to the highest level (root). 
  • The exploit becomes unusable, once the vulnerability is fixed through a patch.
  • Exploits are classified based on how the exploit communicate with the vulnerable software.
  1. A remote exploit works over a network and exploits the security vulnerability without any prior access to the vulnerable system. 
  2. A local exploit requires prior access to the vulnerable system and escalate the privileges of the person running the exploit.

 

2. Payload

  • The payload is the piece of code in the exploit. 
  • It performs a malicious action.
  • Like deleting data, providing the remote connection, sending spam or encrypting data. 

Types of Payload: 

The Metasploit framework has three different types of payloads
  1. Singles 
  2. Stagers 
  3. Stages

1. Single Payload:

  • Singles are self-contained payloads. 
  • They perform a simple task like adding a user to the target computer and running executable files in the victim’s computer. 
  • These kinds of payloads can be caught with non-Metasploit handlers such as netcat. 
  • These payloads are more stable, because they contain everything in one.

2. Stager payload:

  • Stager payloads are used to set up a network connection between the attacker and victim. 
  • It also provide the remote connection to execute commands. 
  • It is difficult to do both of these, so the result is multiple similar stagers.
  • Metasploit will use the stagers to create the buffer memory in a small portion of memory.
  • These stagers are responsible for downloading a large payload (the stage), injecting it into memory, and passing execution to it.

3. Stage payload:

  • Stage payloads are the components of the stagers that are downloaded in the exploited PC by the Stagers. 
  • The various payload stages provide the advanced features with no size limit such as Meterpreter, VNC injection, etc.

3. Auxiliary

  • An exploit without a payload.
  • It is used for discovery, fingerprinting and automating tasks.

Escalating Privileges

  • This can be done after exploiting the system.
  • Privilege escalation is a technique to exploit existing vulnerabilities.
  • Vulnerabilities in design, misconfigurations in an operating system or in any installed applications to gain elevated access to resources that are usually protected from an application or user.
  • There are two types of privilege escalation.
  1. Vertical Privilege Escalation
  2. Horizontal Privilege Escalation

1. Vertical Privilege Escalation:

  • The attacker grants himself higher privileges. 
  • Privilege escalation is typically achieved by performing kernel-level operations
  • That allow the attacker to run unauthorized code.

2. Horizontal Privilege Escalation:

  • Attacker’s use the same level of privileges he already has been granted. 
  • But assume the identity of another user with similar privileges.

Password Cracking

  • In password cracking, hackers use a different kind of attacks to know the target computer login password. 
  • So that they can gain complete access.

Types of passwords:

  • admin 
  • admin123
  • admin@
  • 6842
  • @!#$%%^
  • 1234!@#$
  • admin@123

Methods To Crack password

1. Password Guessing: 

  • Not a technique, but usually the first thing that every criminal will try to do.

2. Brute Force Attack: 

  • All possible permutations & combinations of the keyboard are tried as the victim's password. 
  • All passwords have to be some permutation or combination of victim's keyboard characters.

3. Dictionary Based Attack:

  • All words in the dictionary are tried as the victim’s password.

4. Syllable attack: 

  • Combination of both, brute force attack and a dictionary attack. 
  • This is often used when the password is a nonexistent word.

5. Default Passwords: 

  • Manufacturers configure the hardware or software with default passwords and settings. 
  • We can get default passwords online for devices(http://defaultpassword.us/).

6. Data Sniffing: 

  • Data sniffer to record passwords being sent across the LAN network in plaintext format.

Mitigation:

  • Operating system software should be updated (patched).
  • Use stronger authentication methods.
  • Enable security auditing to help monitor attacks.
  • Avoid storing user names/password on disk.
  • Change passwords on a frequent basis.
  • Build user awareness on social engineering attacks.

Be Aware, Be Secure.

Thank You 🙏

I'm a Cyber Security professional with expertise in Network, Application, Endpoint, Cloud Security, DevOps, and IT Ops. I have experience in various industries and am well-versed in relevant regulations and standards. My goal is to provide exceptional security solutions that protect organizations from evolving threats, while also streamlining workflows and improving collaboration between development, operations, and security teams through DevOps and IT Ops practices.

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