Ethical Hacking Tutorial For Beginners 2025 | Learn Ethical hacking From Scratch | Edureka Rewind

Key Takeaways

hi guys my name is Arya and I welcome you all to this ethical hacking tutorial so I have a lot to cover and let's get started now to begin with let's look into what exactly is hacking and let's go over a brief introduction to hacking and its different types so hacking is identifying weaknesses in a computer system or networks to exploit its weaknesses to gain access an example of hacking is like using a password tracking algorithm to gain access to a Target system now computers have become mandatory to run a successful business it is not enough to have isolated computer systems they need to be networked to facilitate communication with all sorts of external businesses that exist out there now this exposes them to the outside world and hacking as a whole now hacking means using computers to commit fraudulent acts such as privacy invas stealing corporate and personal data cyber crimes and all sorts of stuff now cyber crimes cost many organizations millions of dollars every year and businesses have actually realized the need to protect themselves against such attacks because of the losses that have incurred on their neighboring companies now before we go ahead let me just familiarize you guys with some of the most commonly used terminologies in the hacking world so firstly who is a hacker now a hacker that you see on your screen is this black person out here a hacker is a person who finds and exploits the weakness in computer systems and or networks to gain access hackers are usually skilled computer programmers with in-depth knowledge of computer security Now hackers are classified according to the intents of their action now the first type of hackers are called whart hackers now a whiteart hacker is also known as an ethical hacker now this type of hacker is a hacker who gains access to systems with a view to fix the identified weakness they may may also perform sorts of penetration testing and vulnerability assessment and the most important part to take note about an ethical hacker or a whiteart hacker is that they get prior information from the company or the Target that they are hacking into so this is what actually sets them apart from a cracker or a black hat hacker now a hacker who gains unauthorized access to computer systems for personal gains that person is called a black hat hacker the intent is usually to steal corporate data violate privacy rights transfer funds from bank accounts and more such malicious stuff then there is also a blend of both called the gry Hat hacker so a gry hat hacker is a hacker who is in between ethical and black hat hackers he or she breaks into a computer system without Authority with a view to identify weaknesses and reveal them to the system owner in return for some Buck Bounty so companies like Google for example actually put out a lot of bug bounties now bug bounties are basically telling the public that you are free to actually find a bug in my system and if you do so and tell me about it I will reward you so that is what a bug Bounty is now cyber crimes is the use of computers and networks to perform illegal activities such as spreading computer viruses online bullying and Performing unauthorized electronic fund transfers most cyber crimes are committed through the internet and some cyber crimes can also be carried out using mobile phones Via SMS and online chatting applications now there are a bunch of types of cyber crimes which I have actually discussed in my previous video called what is cyber security and what is ethical hacking so you all can look up that now let me just get to the point of explaining what exactly ethical hacking is unless you've already understood it now ethical hacking is identifying weaknesses in computer systems and or computer networks and coming with counter measures that protect the weakness now ethical hackers have some goals that they need to meet if they're working for a company firstly they need to protect the privacy of the organizations from being hacked secondly they have have to transparently report all the identified weakness in a computer system to the organization thirdly they have to inform hardware and software vendors that are catering to the company of the identified weakness and how they can be patched so these are the three main goals of an ethical hacker now why is an ethical hacker very important for a company well firstly information is one of the most valuable assets of an organization keeping information secure can protect an organization's image and save an organization a lot of money money this is because hacking can lead to a loss of business for organizations that deal in finances for example PayPal now ethical hacking puts them a step ahead of the Cyber criminals who would otherwise lead to a loss of business so basically an ethical hacker would try to mimic a hacker and see what all vulnerabilities that he would find for suppose PayPal PayPal has a lot of ethical hackers working for them so they are constantly trying to find any sort of bugs that might be in their payment Gateway which is actually letting fund being transferred without being validated so that could be a bug so an ethical Hacker's job is to actually identify that bug and Patch it up before any cyber criminal actually finds that bug and uses it for his own malicious intents now the legality of ethical hacking now let me take a moment to actually talk about this topic now ethical hacking is legal if the hacker abides by all the goals that he has to meet that we had just discussed now International Council of e-commerce Consultants or the EC Council provides a certification program that tests an individual skill those who pass the examinations are awarded with certificates and the certificates are supposed to be renewed after some time now our course at Eda that is the ethical hacking course is completely aligned to the CH V10 so you all can go ahead and check that out if you all want to become an ethical hacker because that will certainly guide you as to how you can achieve that certification okay now moving on as an ethical hacker you will be dealing with a bunch of security threats all the time so it's very necessary that you know what exactly a security threat is and what kind of security threats exist now computer system threat is anything that leads to loss or Corruption of data or physical damage the hardware and or the infrastructure knowing how to identify computer security threats is the first step in protecting computer systems the threats could be intentional accidental or caused by natural disaster now in the section we are going to talk about all sorts of security threats and we going to talk about the types of security threats so what exactly is a security threat now security threat is defined as a risk that can harm or potentially harm a computer system or an organization the cause could be a physical one such as someone stealing a computer or it could be a non-physical one such as a virus attack now these are the two kinds of threats that are existing out there it is physical threats and non-physical threats now there are also different kinds of physical threats now let's look into the types of threats first it is internal threats secondly it's external threats and third is human threats now let's go with them one by one so firstly let's look at some examples of internal threats a file that is inside the system or some unstable power supply or humidity that is actually accumulating and becoming due drop somewhere or malfunctioning your system then we come to external threats which include stuff like lightning striking down in your house floods and earthquakes so these are the types of external threats so the last kind of threats that we have is human threats now human threats include theft or vandalism of the infrastructure or the hardware disruptions or accidentals and unintentional errors that cause your computer system to malfunction now let's move on to non-physical threats now these are the kind of threats you as an ethical hacker will be dealing with much more so non-physical threats is completely your for there so non-physical threats include loss or Corruption of system data or disruption of business operations that rely on computer systems or the loss of sensitive information then non-physical threats can also include illegal monitoring of activities or computer systems then cyber security breaches of all sorts and other stuffs like viruses Trojans worms spyware key logos adwares there's so many other stuff even denial of service attacks comeon nonphysical threats so basically you get the idea that anything which doesn't have a physical form like a computer virus or worms or a DDOS attack is a non-physical threat now to protect an organization against non-physical threats there are things that you could do so firstly as an organization to protect your computer system from the previously mentioned threats an organization should have a logical security measure in place now logical security measures could include stuff like antiviruses or cyber security measures like some in ENT response system that you have for your organization for such stuff now to protect yourself against viruses and Trojans and forms and all sorts of stuff an organization can use antivirus softwares now in addition to antivirus software an organization can also have a control measure on the usage of external storage devices and visiting websites that is most likely to download unauthorized programs onto the user's computer thirdly unauthorized access to computer systems resources can be prevented by the use of authentication methods and the authentication method can be in the form of user IDs and strong passwords smart cards and Biometrics of sorts last but not the least is the installation of intrusion detection or intrusion prevention systems that is your IPS and IDs now these can be used to protect against denial of service attacks and there are other measures too that can also be used for denial of service attacks so these were some of the preventive measures that you should take for non-physical threats now it is not not necessary for you to become an ethical hacker to take all these preventive measures now you sitting at home and watching this video can do this actually very simply by just using a virtual private Network whenever you're browsing the internet or using a very good antivirus system that you've actually paid for because nothing actually good comes free let's remember that now I digress and let's move on okay now let's talk about the skills that you would need to become an ethical hacker so firstly you need to be good at programming now a programming language is a language that is used to develop computer programs and there are plenty of examples like HTML JavaScript python PHP and you should be proficient at quite a few of these I'll tell you why it's very soon so secondly you should also have a very good and in-depth knowledge of operating systems especially because you'll be working on linox mostly if you're an ethical hacker now you should know how to go about the the command line that exists in linox and all the bash commands because you'll be extensively using them for your networking purposes which brings me to my third point that you should be proficient at networking and should know the ins and out of how a packet actually gets delivered from your computer to a Target system so three things programming operating systems and networking these are the three things that you'll be basically playing around with every day as an ethical hacker now many people normally ask what programming languages should I learn if I'm am trying to become an ethical hacker well there is no one answer because you'll be dealing with a bunch of services so it would be smart of you as a person pursuing ethical hacking to know at least one example of all the types of languages that exist out there for example take HTML so you could learn HTML for actually knowing how web pages work which will help you because it's a cross-platform language and it is basically good if you're actually targeting web hackers now login forms and other data entry methods are used using HTML to get these form types of data now you could also learn PHP which is of great serers side language and is widely used over the internet and knowing PHP will actually help you exploit weak PHP code so if suppose a company has some very weak backend and you as an ethical hacker have to test out their backend you should be proficient enough to know what the language is doing and where the discrepancies in the code exist because you wouldn't know that if you're not proficient at PHP same goes for databases now you should definitely know some postr SQL and some nosql along with some SQL of course because SQL is the most commonly used but as an ethical hacker you'll be working with these three types of databases so it would be pretty helpful to know all these types of languages like MySQL is a must then also knowing some bash scripting because you'll be working on Linux and most of the times you'll be tinkering around with tools and you'll be trying to customize them to meet your own needs so you should learn all sorts of programming if you're trying to become an ethical hacker because there is no single language that you'll be working on now where else is programming actually used when ethical hacking many people ask me after asking what programming language should I use there why should I learn programming when I'm doing etical hacking now let me just try and explain that now firstly hackers are the problem solvers and Tool Builders of the company and learning how to program will help you implement the solutions to problems that you find in the company security Now it also differentiates you from script KES who actually use pre-made tools to actually hack into systems so those are the people who are just practicing hacking and they already use pre-made tools like Metasploit and mitmf Frameworks to actually put off some hacking gimmicks now writing programs as a hacker will also help you automate many of the tasks which would usually take a lot of your time to complete so time saved is money made and thirdly writing programs can also help you identify and exploit programming errors in applications that you will be targeting now last but not the least you don't have to reinvent the ve all the time there are a number of Open Source programs that are readily usable out there but it is always useful that you can customize already existing applications and add your own methods to suit your needs and that will be impossible if you had no idea of how to program so there you go I gave you four very good reasons as to why you should learn programming as an ethical hacker or person who is trying to pursue ethical hacking as a career now let's go over the different types of tools that ethical hackers use on a day-to-day basis so the first tool that we are going to talk about is netsparker now netsparker is an easy to use web application security scanner that can automatically find SQL injections cross-site scripting and other vulnerabilities in Min our web application and web services and it is available as an on premise and a software as a service solution now it features include dead accurate vulnerability detection with unique proof-based scanning technology it is also known for its minimal configuration required the scanner automatically detects the URL rewrites rules custom 404 error Pages then is the rest API for seamless integration with the stlc buck tracking and it is also a fully scalable solution it can scan 1,000 web applications in just 24 hours okay so the next tool that we're going to be talking about is BB suit now BB suit is a useful platform for performing security testing of web applications it's various tools work seamlessly together to support the entire penetration testing process it spans from initial mapping to analysis of an application's attack surface now its features are that it can detect over 3,000 web application vulnerabilities it can scan open source softwares and custom built applications it has an easy to use login sequence recorder and allows automatic scanning and it can also be used for reviewing bability data with built-in vulnerability management it also easily provides wide variety of Technical and compliance reports and it can also be used for detecting critical vulnerabilities with 100% accuracy it can be used for automated crawl and scan Advanced scanning features for manual testers and it is also a Cutting Edge scanning logic now the next tool that we're going to be talking about is nmap now nmap is a recognizance tool now recognisance is the first phase of ethical hacking so in reconnaissance we are actually trying to gather all the information and nmap is a brilliant tool for doing that it can tell you about the domain name server it can tell you how a packet is actually reaching the target system it can determine what kind of an operating system the target System is using which is basically footprinting it can also do some very basic fingerprinting that is trying to figure out how a packet reaches which I just said what is the server information like when was the server created whose name is a server under where is the server located so all sorts of information gathering stuff and map is a brilliant tool now the next tool that we're going to talk about that ethical hackers use on a daily basis is acuns now acuns is a fully automated ethical hacking solution that mimics a hacker to keep one step ahead of malicious Intruders the web application security scanner accurately scans HTML 5 JavaScript and single page applications it can audit complex authenticated web apps and issue compliance and management reports on a wide range of web and network vulnerabilities features include the following firstly it can scan for all varant of SQL injection cross-site scripting and around 4,500 additional vulnerabilities also it detects over 1,200 WordPress core themes and plug-in vulnerabilities it is fast and scalable and crawls hundreds and thousands of pages without any sort of interruption it integrates with popular wfs and issue trackers to Aid in the sdlc process and it is always available on premise as a Cloud solution okay now the next tool that we're going to talk about is hashcat now hashcat is a robust password cracking ethical hacking tool it can help users to recover lost passwords audit password security or just find out what data is stored in a hash features include that it is open-source platform it is also crossplatform it allows utilizing multiple devices in the same system it can utilize mixed device types in the same system it supports distributed tracking networks and it also supports interactive pause and resume it supports session and restore and there's also a built-in benchmarking system and it also integrates thermal Watchdogs and supports automatic Performance Tuning and okay so the last tool that we're going to be talking about that ethical hack has use almost on a daily basis is called SQL map now SQL map automates the process of detecting and exploiting SQL injection weaknesses it is open source and crossplatform and it supports the following databases so it supports MySQL Oracle post SQL mssql servers Ms access IBM db2 SQL light firebird sideb and a lot of other database type it also supports the following SQL injection types so these are Boolean based blinds time based blinds eror based Union query and stacked queries and out ofans so these are some of the tools that are being used by ethical hackers on a daily basis to do their job okay now moving on let's talk about social engineering so what exactly is social engineering now social engineering is the art of manipulating a user or a bunch of users of a Computing system into revealing confidential information that can can be used to gain unauthorized access to a computer system the term can also include activities such as exploiting human kindness greed and curiosity to gain access to restricted access buildings or getting the user to installing backdoor software knowing the tricks used by hackers to trick users into releasing vital login information among others is the fundamental in protecting computer system now social engineering is a very widely used process so as an ethical hacker you should know what is exactly social engineering and how it is done so basically social engineering is manipulating people as I just said and you must all know that people are very easy to manipulate in this world because one they contain emotions and secondly emotions can wave on from one form to the other one day you're sad the other day you're happy and a hacker very well knows how to actually manipulate you into giving out your information based on whether you're happy or sad so as an ethical hacker it is very important for him to educate his organization's people on how to not get social engineered and giving up their social credentials so this is why I've included the topic of social engineering now let's go over the phases of social engineering so social engineering is divided into five distinct phases and they form a cycle so this cycle is generally used by hackers when they're performing social engineering on you so you as an ethical hacker should also know these five steps so first step is gathering information now this is the first step and the hacker learns as much as he can about the intended victim the information is gathered from company websites other Publications and sometimes by talking to the user of the target system in itself the next part is actually planning your attack now the attacker outlines how he or she is intending to attack the target victim depending on the information that he has gathered from the first phase now after the person has decided how you are going to be attacked he is going to try and acquire all the tools to attack you so these include computer programs that an attacker will be using when launching the attack so this can be something as simple as mety to something as complex as a fully catered ethical hacker built penetration testing tool now the fourth part is actually performing the attack so the weaknesses that have been found through all the information gathering is attacked on with the tools that have also been gathered now the information gathered during the social engineering tactics such as pet names birth dates of organization Founders and all sorts of information is used in attack such as password guessing so after the information is gained the cycle keeps going on and on and even more crucial information is passed down to the hacker now social engineering techniques can take many forms now these are the forms that you will normally see so first is the familiarity exploit now users are less suspicious of people they are familiar with that's normal human tendency an attacker can familiarize him or herself with the users of the target system prior to the social engineering attack and now the attacker May interact with the user during meals when the user probably goes out for a smoke break and he or she may join on social events while they're out for a drink and something like that this makes the attacker familiar to the user and let's suppose that the user works a building that requires an access code or card to gain access the attacker may follow the user as they enter such places and the users are most likely to hold the door open for the attacker to go in as they are familiar with them now the attacker can also ask for answers to questions such as where you met your spouse or the name of your high school math teacher and the users are most likely to reveal the answer as they trust the familiar face this information could be later on used to hack email accounts other accounts that ask similar questions if one forgets their password now the second technique is an intimidating circumstance now people tend to avoid people who intimidate others around them using this technique the attacker May pretend to have a heated argument on the phone or with an accomplish in the scheme the attacker May then ask the user for the information which would be used to compromise the security of the user system the users are most likely to give the correct answer just to avoid having a confrontation with the attacker this technique can also be used to avoid being checked at a security checkpoint now the Third Kind is fishing now this technique uses trickery and deceit to obtain private data from users the social engineer may try to impersonate a genuine website such as Yahoo or Facebook and then ask the unsuspecting user to confirm their account name and password this technique could also be used to get credit card information or any other valuable personal data now the next form is tailgating this technique involves following the users behind as they enter restricted areas as a human curtsy the user is most likely to let the social engineer inside the restricted area and the third one is of course human curiosity and emotions as a whole using this technique the social engineer May deliberately drop a virus infected flash dis in an area where the users can easily pick it up the user will most likely plug the flash dis into the computer and the Flash dis may contain auto running viruses or the user may be tempted to open a file with a name such as the employer re-evaluation report which may actually be an infected file and above this human greed is also major thing in Social Engineering many people are lured in by making promises such as I'll give you so much money if you click this link or you can win a game and win so much money which is just general forms of social engineering to get your credentials or cookies now there are a bunch of counter measures that you can take now these are pretty obvious but let's just discuss them because we have quite a lot of time so to counter the familiarity exploit the user must be trained not to substitute familiarity with security measures even the people that they are familiar with must prove that they have the authorization to access certain areas and information to counter intimidating circumstances users must be trained to identify social engineering techniques that fish for sensitive information and politely say no thirdly to counter fishing techniques most sites such as Yahoo use secure connections to encrypt data and prove that they are the ones who they claim to be checking the URL may help few spot fake websites and avoiding responding to emails that request you to provide personal information now to counter tailgating users must be trained not to let others users use their security clearance to gain access to restricted areas each user must use their own access for clearance at all times and human emotions can't be helped as we all know humans are stupid and there's no helping human stupidity but still as a general rule of thumb never reply to any Nigerian or any African guy that is asking you for money because you just fell to kind one simple day okay so those were the types of social engineering now as ethical hacker you will be dealing with a lot of cryptography so I've also included cryptography in this tutorial so let's go over what exactly is cryptography now information plays a vital role in running businesses organizations military operations and such information in the wrong hands can lead to loss of business or catastroph results now to secure communication a business can use cryptology to Cipher information cryptology involves transferring information into non-human readable formats and vice versa now let us discuss what is cryptography so cryptography is the study and application of techniques that hide the real meaning of information by transforming it into non-human readable formats and vice versa so let me just try and illustrate how cryptography looks like so suppose we have some text that says I love of apples now if you were to use some cryptographic algorithm that actually encrypts this text by actually Shifting the letters by two it would look something like this so I would turn into K and L would turn into n o would turn into q v into Y and you would have something what we call in the Computing world as Cipher text now Cipher text is confusing and it is almost impossible to understand if you don't really know the key but as an ethical hacker your job will be mostly turning Cipher textt into plain text without actually knowing the key now that is exactly what is called as cryptoanalysis or crypt analysis so Crypt analysis is the art of trying to decrypt the encrypted messages without the use of the key that was used to encrypt the messages Crypt analysis uses mathematical analysis and algorithms to decipher the ciphers and the success of crypto analysis attacks depends on the amount of time available the computing power available and the storage capacity available now let's go over the types of of cryptoanalysis techniques are the techniques that are used to break into Cipher text so the first technique that is used for deciphering text is a Brute Force attack now this type of attack uses algorithms that try to guess all the possible logical combination of the plain text which are then ciphered and compared against the original Cipher second kind is dictionary attacks now this type of attack uses a word list in order to find match of either the plane text or key it is mostly used when trying to crack encrypted passwords now the Third Kind is called a rainbow table attack and this type of attack compares the cipher text against pre-computed hashes to find matches so basically you have a table of hashes and you're constantly comparing your given hash to the hash you're trying to find now let's also discuss the different types of cryptographic algorithms that have been developed over time so the first algorithm that we are going to discuss about is md5 now md5 is an acronym for message digest 5 it is used to create 128bit hash values and theoretically speaking hashes cannot be reversed into original plan text and md5 is used to encrypt passwords as well as check data Integrity md5 is not Collision resistance and cous resistance is the difficulty in finding two values that produce the same hash values now the second type of algorithm is sha which stands for secure hashing algorithm now sha algorithms are used to generate condensed representations of messages and these are called digests it has various versions such as Sha zero which produced 128bit hash value it was withdrawn from use due to significant flaws and replaced by Sha one now sha one produces 160 bit hash values and it is similar to the earlier versions of md5 and it has cryptographic weaknesses and is not recommended for use after the year 2010 then we have sha 2 it has two hash functions namely sha 256 and Sha 512 sha 256 uses 32bit words while sha 512 uses 64bit words then is sha 3 and this algorithm was formerly known as kcca repeat and is widely used in the validation process in ethereum if you know what that is now the Third Kind of algorithm is rc4 and this stands for riveting Cipher 4 and this algorithm is used to create stream ciphers it is mostly used in the protocol such as SSL which stands for secure socket layer and to encrypt internet communication using we which stands for Wired equivalent privacy to secure wireless networks okay now this brings us to the theoretical end of our ethical hacking tutorial now it's time for some hacktivity so for today's activity we will create a simple Cipher using rt4 algorithm and we will then attempt to decrypt it using Brute Force attack for this exercise I'm going to assume that we know encryption key is 24 bits and we will use this information to break the cipher now for this we are going to be using this software called cryp tool and I already have that downloaded I'll leave the download link in the description yall can download it and follow with me as we are performing this activity so firstly open cryp tool one and replace the text that you see now we can replace the text with whatever we want so I'm going to be replacing it with some random text like never underestimate the determination of a kid who is let's say time rich and cash pool now that's one of my favorite quotes and we're going to try and encrypt this so firstly we're going to try and encrypt this for that click on the encrypt and decrypt menu and point to symmetric modern now in symmetric model you will find rc4 so we will be trying to actually encrypt it using rc4 so let us put the key length as 24 bits so we already know that and the value has been set to 000000 now all you have to do is click the encrypt button and you will get the following stream Cipher so this is your Cipher text so as an ethical hacker you will be more interested in the analysis of the cipher text rather than the creation of the cipher text so as an ethical hacker you will need to analyze the cipher text and try and decipher what is the plain text that is hiding behind this so to do this using crypto to you can go into the analysis part and then go into symmetric encryption and modern now here all you have to select is the algorithm that is used now the assumption that we made is that it is going to be 24-bit key length so we can always assume that and all we have to do is start analyzing and what this will do is run a Brute Force search on this entire Cipher text now depending on your computer's computing power this can take some time now it's showing 1 hour and 32 minutes so let me just actually let this run and show you what it's going to look like now as you guys can see here our Brute Force attack has been completed it took quite some time but our results are out here so our result is divided into these four columns so first is the entropy the second is the hex dump that is the hex that was analyzed now the third part is part that we are interested in so this is the cipher or the decipher text that we got from the cipher text and these are the keys that were used to actually decrypt them so when the key for or rather C1 9334 was used this is the decrypted text that we got now all these makes no sense but just to actually identify what probable plain text is to a certain Cipher text always look for the entropy now out here this has the lowest entropy that is 4.1 and as we can see that it is indeed the sentence that I had typed out never underestimate the determination of a kid who is time rich and cash poor so this actually shows us how rc4 that is a brilliant cryptographic algorithm that is used in SSL and w can be so easily broken with AB brood Force analysis and these tools are widely available for a general user like me or you to use so this brings us to the end of the activity that I spoke about and this also brings us to the end of this ethical hacking tutorial I hope you guys had a wonderful time learning the various factors of ethical hacking like cryptography social engineering the phases of ethical hacking and all these such please don't forget get to watch my other video which is what is ethical hacking I have actually made a beginner's video as to what ethical hacking is and how ethical hacking actually works and we at Eda also have an ethical hacking course which is aligned to the CH version 10 that is the set certified ethical hacker certification version 10 if you buy this course you will actually be learning from a certified ethical hacker all about ethical hacking and there'll be a live instructor ledge session so on guys we are going to be releasing a lot of more free content regarding ethical hacking but that's it for today goodbye