Computer Hacking Techniques

Introduction to Chapter 1

There are typically two opposing perceptions of hackers among the general public. Some people hold them in high regard as great minds, while others despise them as small-time offenders. Both ideas may be accurate for many skilled hackers, but the general public's perception has been warped and deformed thanks to television dramas and movies. The typical user cannot begin to comprehend what hackers truly do because they lack a technical understanding of how computers and the Internet operate. In actuality, the word "hacker" typically has a negative connotation. Any non-technical individual will answer, "They're the terrible ones that steal people's credit cards, listen to my phone," if you ask them what a hacker is.

They come across content that isn't written for novices, which makes them want to start hacking. You'll discover that you are far more informed than your friends and that technology is actually quite interesting once you have the fundamentals down and can truly apply the knowledge you will gain in this book. Over the past few decades, hackers' tools have changed, and so have those who have become interested in and passionate about hacking. Although technology is only becoming more complex, hackers are using more advanced tools, making the learning curve much less difficult for beginners. I will teach you a lot of useful knowledge about hacking in this book, including

how to use some intriguing software in a step-by-step fashion. The majority of you probably want to start hacking right away, but before you go on to some of the more difficult methods covered in this book, I strongly advise that you spend some time studying the fundamentals.

How to Become an Effective Hacker

Because they are passionate about what they do, some hackers are able to succeed so well. Some hackers break systems only to test if they can because their mentality motivates them to take on really difficult challenges. The same two things are required for every talent you wish to develop in order to become a proficient hacker: time and practice. Don't quit if you can't understand anything after two minutes. Some experts will organize and carry out their attacks over the course of weeks or even months. And as soon as you master the fundamentals, you'll be able to put these strategies into practice in a matter of minutes. I suppose I would

Chapter 2: A Hacking Overview

Hackers are veiled in mystery to the typical computer user, who knows nothing about the Internet and network security. The majority of individuals are unaware of what they do or how they operate. Additionally, the movies do little to dispel its mysticism. In countless action films, a hacker who can access top-secret computer systems to rescue the world plays the lead role. You can see them entering unusual characters and figures into a command prompt that may be in a foreign language when the camera pans over their computer displays. Interestingly enough, a program called NMAP, which I'll show you how to use later in this book, is regularly used by hackers in movies. Having seen

topology and employ reconnaissance methods to acquire data and search for weaknesses. The fact that these tools are now largely automated is fantastic news for beginners. In the past, hacking software hadn't been developed that combined enormous quantities of code and resources into straightforward instructions. Because of this, it was challenging for hackers in the past to have a deep grasp of the technology they were seeking to compromise. Having a very thorough grasp of modern technology can undoubtedly make you a better hacker, but my point is that these tools are getting simpler and simpler to use. In truth, some young children and teens use very advanced equipment because they are too interested in their own good.

the fundamentals of networking protocols and addresses.

attack types and Well-Known viruses in Chapter 3

The majority of you have certainly heard of Trojans, rootkits, Trojan horses, malware, key loggers, worms, and viruses before, but what the heck are these things and how can hackers use them to steal people's data and interfere with their computer systems? Even though each of these tools differs somewhat from the others, they all seek to penetrate a target's system and provide the attacker access to data they do not already have. No, I won't teach you how to create malicious computer software, but if you want to call yourself a hacker, you need to have a solid grasp of these subjects. You should first and foremost comprehend the idea of computer viruses since they are one

It's possible that you have already encountered malware's detrimental effects. Online downloads are one of the most common methods used to spread malware. In this method, a user downloads and installs a file that has been infected with malware. With the majority of files hosted by P2P (Peer-to-Peer) file-sharing systems like Bit Torrent, you'll commonly encounter this. Malware is derived from the combination of two other terms: harmful software. It may also refer to any program used by an attacker to get access to a target's data, prevent them from accessing it or modify data on the target's computer. This phrase is also sometimes used as an umbrella term to represent a variety of assaults. A key logger is also a new invention.

Code Red 1.

I am aware of your possible assumption, but no, this has nothing to do with movies. When people think of hacking in movies, they see adolescent hackers breaking into top-secret military installations and turning them into "code red" alarm systems. If you can believe it, the two engineers who initially found the worm back in 2001 were simply sipping the revolting cherry-flavored cola when they discovered and dubbed this attack. Its victims were servers using the Microsoft IIS web server software, which was a rather nasty worm. This attack largely depended on a code flaw that made servers susceptible to a buffer overflow problem in an earlier version of the code. However,

Sasser 2.

Another worm targeted at Windows is Sasser (noticing a pattern yet?). It was developed by a notorious hacker named Sven Jaschan, who is also known for creating the Netsky virus, and initially came to public attention in 2004. The fact that this worm infected more than a million targets was one of the reasons it garnered attention in Internet security news! Once more, this worm exploited a buffer overflow flaw that led to system crashes on its victim. Additionally, it made it difficult to restart your computer without disconnecting the power line and it caused many systems to totally go down. To be fair, most people saw this worm as an annoyance rather than a significant threat. But that can't be disputed. that it disrupted society significantly and widely. Even essential infrastructure components were affected, which significantly decreased the performance of networks. It utilized its target machines to spread to other computers, just like other worm kinds do. But one of the major issues with this worm is that once a patch was developed, consumers didn't upgrade their operating systems. Organizations in the public and private sectors, including news outlets, transit networks, healthcare providers, and even certain aircraft firms, were impacted. But what was the outcome? The total amount of losses was estimated to be over $18 billion. You may be wondering what became of the infamous Jaschan. Fortunately for him, he was still young, and considering how much he had done, he only got a slap on the wrist. the harm he caused. He received a 21-month suspended sentence in the end.

3. Zeus

The Zeus virus was really a Trojan horse designed to infect Windows-based computers in order to coerce users into doing certain tasks that were judged to be illegal activities. It is most frequently used to conduct keylogging operations and man-in-the-middle attacks, which enable an attacker to filter online browsing data before transmitting it to the target web server. The assault also used phishing methods, although it most commonly infected hosts by using innocent-looking programs as a transport medium into the intended targets.

Thousands of individual file downloads and FTP accounts from the biggest banks and companies were destroyed once it was uncovered in 2009. Amazon, Bank of America, Oracle, and even Cisco are among the parties participating. The breach also gave the hackers access to financial details, email addresses, and usernames and passwords for social networking sites.

I Love You Attack, No. 4

The 'I Love You' assault is so spectacular and admired in hacker groups because it is thought to have caused losses totaling $10 billion. More astonishing still, according to experts, was that 10% of all computers linked to the Internet at the time had this infection. It is astounding, to put it mildly, that a computer virus has infected 10% of the Internet. Things were becoming so bad that some of the bigger companies and governmental bodies started shutting down their email systems to prevent getting infected.

5. Melissa

According to legend, this sinister virus was named after an exotic dancer that its inventor, David L. Smith, used to know. An infected text file that seemed to be a list of usernames and passwords for membership- and subscription-only pornographic websites submitted to the alt. sex mailing list. Usenet is thought to have been the virus's initial origin. However, once a person downloaded this Word document, all hell broke loose, and the infection started to spread. The virus would first look at the first 50 email addresses in the infected host's address book and begin sending emails to those addresses. Large businesses' and governmental organizations' email systems would be significantly disrupted as a result. The virus would also damage papers by adding references to The virus would even add references to Simpsons television show papers, corrupting them. However, Smith's ownership of the original Word document was finally established, and he was detained a week after the virus started to spread. Smith was originally given a 10-year sentence, but because he turned informer on other hackers and assisted the FBI in further arrests, he only ended up serving 20 months in jail and paying a $5,000 fine (instead of the original 10-year term). And to top it all off, it was calculated that his malware caused losses of over $80 million.

6. The Conficker Worm

 made its debut in 2008 and has an unidentified origin. This worm was particularly problematic because it produced a botnet, or network of infected computers, with over 9 million hosts, which caused harm to both huge corporations and ordinary people, as well as government organizations. Due to the astonishing 9 billion dollars in estimated damages it produced, this worm ranks among the top 10. Due to an unpatched vulnerability involving background network functions, it might infect Windows computers. After infecting a host, the worm would cause chaos by blocking access to Windows updates and antivirus updates. It might even lock user accounts to prevent users from signing in and eradicating the worm.

If that weren't awful enough, the worm would then carry out its assault by installing malicious malware that would turn the victim's computer into a member of a botnet and deceive people into handing the attacker money by holding their machine ransom.

Microsoft and other antivirus software providers finally published patches to stop and fix this worm, but it caused significant harm until a fix could be found.

MyDoom 7.

MyDoom was one of the fastest email worms to infect large numbers of machines since the I Love You assault when it was originally discovered back in 2004. Although the originator of this assault is still unknown, it is believed that they were given a significant sum of money to execute it because the virus contained the statement, "Andy, I'm just doing my job. Sorry, nothing personal.

This worm was really simple since it mimicked an email problem. The worm would transmit copies of itself to persons located in the email address book of the infected machine after a user had clicked on the "error" to examine the problem. In order to proliferate over the network, it would also replicate itself into peer-to-peer directories on the infected systems. Additionally, it's thought that the worm is still active on the Internet today and that the losses it caused totaled almost $38 billion.

Stuxnet 8.

This strike has a political undertone because it is believed to have been planned by the Israeli Defense Force and the American management. This virus was built with the aim of cyber warfare, unlike some previous viruses that were made out of hatred, disdain, or the desire to see how much harm a skilled hacker might do. The intention was to thwart Iranian efforts to develop nuclear weapons, and nearly two-thirds of the hosts infected by this virus were found in Iran.

In fact, it's estimated that 20% of Iran's nuclear centrifuges were damaged by the virus. The PLC (Programming Logic Controllers) components, which are essential to automating heavy machinery and industrial-grade equipment, were the specific targets of this malware. It originally intended to infect Siemens-made devices, but if it infected a host without access to Siemens products, the host system would become inactive.

In essence, it would damage the PLC controllers and make the equipment run too quickly, which would eventually lead the machinery to break.

9. Crypto Locker

This virus is an additional instance of a trojan horse that infected Windows machines with the intention of holding target systems ransom in return for money.

This Trojan was extremely smart since it had a variety of techniques to infect other systems. But it was extremely problematic because after infecting a host, it would go on to encrypt the hard disk using an RSA key that the owner of the machine had no access to. You would need to pay the attackers via prepaid methods or bitcoins if you wanted your files to be decrypted.

The contents on their hard drives remained unavailable since they could not be decrypted without the key, despite many users being successful in deleting the Trojan from their PCs. Fortunately, the attack's mastermind, Evgeniy Bogachow, was apprehended and the keys used to encrypt the victim's hard drives were made public. It appears that the operation infected around 500,000 targets and was effective in collecting $3 million in ransom payments.

10. Reminiscing

I always find it hilarious when proponents of Apple tell PC customers that their computers are better than Windows ones because their programming is unbreakable and Macs can never have viruses. While it is believed that Windows computers are more prone to viruses, Macs are also not without flaws. Such was the situation with the 2011-first-discovered Flashback Trojan. This Trojan made infected Mac computers a member of a botnet by using infected websites to inject incorrect Java Script code into the host browser. Believe it or not, a number of the infected Mac machines were even kept inside Apple HQ. This Trojan had infected over 600,000 Macbooks. Thousands of Macs are still reportedly impacted by this Trojan, despite the fact that multiple warnings and fixes have been developed for it.

In Summary.

 Trojan horses, malware, and viruses are only one aspect of hacking. The reality is that many viruses were made by specialists with a higher understanding of computing systems than many security specialists. These assaults were all carried out by skilled software engineers and programmers. You must become a skilled software engineer if you want to become as notorious as these sorts of hackers. There is no avoiding it.

I do, however, hope that this part has only made you more aware of the potential for some of these attacks to result in broad destruction and expensive damages.

Please note that the objective of this tutorial is not to teach you how to write code that would destroy other people's computers, cost millions of dollars in damages, and subject you to severe penalties like jail time and unjust fines. However, as a white hat hacker, you must be aware that these kinds of assaults do exist so you have a basic understanding of hacking terminology.

On the other hand, I'll demonstrate how to map network topologies, exploit vulnerabilities, break a variety of passwords, and scan targets for security issues. In these sorts of cases, our attention will be on breaking into a single target server or network rather than attempting to spread a pandemic throughout the whole Internet. However, all of that may wait since you first need to comprehend the many categories of online criminals, moral issues surrounding the application of the knowledge in this book, and the repercussions of your conduct should you use it improperly and get caught.