Ethical Hacking Interview Questions

1) Explain what is Ethical Hacking?

Ethical Hacking is when a person is allowed to hacks the system with the permission of the product owner to find weakness in a system and later fix them.

2) What is the difference between IP address and Mac address?

IP address: To every device IP address is assigned, so that device can be located on the network.  In other words IP address is like your postal address, where anyone who knows your postal address can send you a letter.

MAC (Machine Access Control) address: A MAC address is a unique serial number assigned to every network interface on every device.  Mac address is like your physical mail box, only your postal carrier (network router) can identify it and you can change it by getting a new mailbox (network card) at any time and slapping your name  (IP address) on it.

3) List out some of the common tools used by Ethical hackers?

·         Meta Sploit

·         Wire Shark

·         NMAP

·         John The Ripper

·         Maltego

4) What are the types of ethical hackers?

The types of ethical hackers are

·         Grey Box hackers or Cyberwarrior

·         Black Box penetration Testers

·         White Box penetration Testers

·         Certified Ethical hacker

5) What is footprinting in ethical hacking? What is the techniques used for footprinting?

Footprinting refers accumulating and uncovering as much as information about the target network before gaining access into any network. The approach adopted by hackers before hacking

·         Open Source Footprinting : It will look for the contact information of administrators that will be used in guessing the password in Social engineering

·         Network Enumeration : The hacker tries to identify the domain names and the network blocks of the target network

·         Scanning : Once the network is known, the second step is to spy the active IP addresses on the network.  For identifying active IP addresses (ICMP) Internet Control Message Protocol is an active IP addresses

·         Stack Fingerprinting : Once the hosts and port have been mapped by scanning the network, the final footprinting step can be performed.  This is called Stack fingerprinting.

6) Explain what is Brute Force Hack?

Brute force hack is a technique for hacking password and get access to system and network resources, it takes much time, it needs a hacker to learn about JavaScripts.  For this purpose, one can use tool name “Hydra”.

7) Explain what is DOS (Denial of service) attack? What are the common forms of DOS attack?

Denial of Service, is a malicious attack on network that is done by flooding the network with useless traffic.  Although, DOS does not cause any theft of information or security breach, it can cost the website owner a great deal of money and time.

·         Buffer Overflow Attacks

·         SYN Attack

·         Teardrop Attack

·         Smurf Attack

·         Viruses

8) Explain what is SQL injection?

SQL is one of the technique used to steal data from organizations, it is a fault created in the application code.  SQL injection happens when you inject the content into a SQL query string and the result mode content into a SQL query string, and the result modifies the syntax of your query in ways you did not intend

9) What are the types of computer based social engineering attacks? Explain what is Phishing?

Computer based social engineering attacks are

·         Phishing

·         Baiting

·         On-line scams

Phishing technique involves sending false e-mails, chats or website to impersonate real system with aim of stealing information from original website.

10) Explain what is Network Sniffing?

A network sniffer monitors data flowing over computer network links. By allowing you to capture and view the packet level data on your network, sniffer tool can help you to locate network problems. Sniffers can be used for both stealing information off a network and also for legitimate network management.

11) Explain what is ARP Spoofing or ARP poisoning?

ARP (Address Resolution Protocol) is a form of attack in which an attacker changes MAC ( Media Access Control) address and attacks an internet LAN by changing the target computer’s ARP cache with a forged ARP request and reply packets.

12) How you can avoid or prevent ARP poisoning?

ARP poisoning can be prevented by following methods

·         Packet Filtering : Packet filters are capable for filtering out and blocking packets with conflicting source address information

·         Avoid trust relationship : Organization should develop protocol that rely on trust relationship as little as possible

·         Use ARP spoofing detection software : There are programs that inspects and certifies data before it is transmitted and blocks data that is spoofed

·         Use cryptographic network protocols : By using secure communications protocols like TLS, SSH, HTTP secure prevents ARP spoofing attack by encrypting data prior to transmission and authenticating data when it is received

13) What is Mac Flooding?

Mac Flooding is a technique where the security of given network switch is compromised. In Mac flooding the hacker or attacker floods the switch with large number of frames, then what a switch can handle. This make switch behaving as a hub and transmits all packets at all the ports. Taking the advantage of this the attacker will try to send his packet inside the network to steal the sensitive information.

14) Explain what is DHCP Rogue Server?

A Rogue DHCP server is DHCP server on a network which is not under the control of administration of network staff. Rogue DHCP Server can be a router or modem.  It will offer users IP addresses , default gateway, WINS servers as soon as user’s logged in.  Rogue server can sniff into all the traffic sent by client to all other networks.

15) Explain what is Cross-site scripting and what are the types of Cross site scripting?

Cross site scripting is done by using the known vulnerabilities like web based applications, their servers or plug-ins users rely upon.  Exploiting one of these by inserting malicious coding into a link which appears to be a trustworthy source.  When users click on this link the malicious code will run as a part of the client’s web request and execute on the user’s computer, allowing attacker to steal information.

There are three types of Cross-site scripting

• Non-persistent
•  Persistent
• Server side versus DOM based vulnerabilities

More about Ethical Hacking:

• Ethical Hacking Interview Questions