Ethical Hacking is one of the most in-demand skills across industries which uses computers and the internet to store and manage their data. According to a research conducted by the IT giant IBM, there is going to be a huge bounce in the requirement of professional cyber security experts and experts with Ethical hacking skills in the near future. And the reason behind this requirement is the increase in the amount of sensitive and valuable data that is available digitally, all thanks to the internet. These data are targeted by hackers, who try to use and misuse others’ data without any authorization, by using various digital loopholes. To protect these digital assets from hackers, there is a huge increase in the number of vacancies for Ethical Hackers, who prevent hacking by protecting digital assets using various techniques.
And as everyone is aware that to land onto a good job position in the field of Ethical Hacking, you will have to face a technical interview. And no one can predict what the interviewer might ask there at any instant. Be it a fresher or any experienced professional, a strong understanding of the basic concepts are the foundation of getting an edge in the interview round.
To be helpful for your career ambitions, we have curated a list of 101 questions and answers that consists of the most common as well as most unique questions that can be asked at an Ethical Hacking Interview. Go through all of them to prepare yourself for the most important interview of your life that can ensure you a good place in your dream company and you could be working on what you love. So let’s get started:
The term Ethical Hacking is defined as a permissible action of hacking onto a system or network to identify security loopholes and then fix them, to prevent actual cyber-attacks.
A hacker is an outsider to exploit the digital loopholes and tries to get access to any network/system in an unauthorized manner. The actions that are considered as part of hacking are to steal any confidential information, blocking access to critical data, insert any kind of malware, disturb the configuration of the network, locking etc.
Yes, Hackers can be classified into various groups depending on the method that they use for hacking.
Yes, here are the few groups in which hackers can be classified:
As per research conducted by IBM, the cost of a data breach is going to increase up to $3.94 million in the upcoming future, and hence there will be a huge number of vacant job positions that demand a highly skilled Ethical Hacking professional.
A network sniffer is a piece of software code that intercepts the data on a network and collects sensitive data from the internet traffic and decodes it into human-readable data.
Yes, there are many sniffers available and they differ based on the facilities that they offer. Some of them are WinDump, Diff, Wireshark, Ettercap, MSN Sniffer, and EtherApe.
Spoofing is a misleading act of gaining access to any targeted system by communicating as a trusted source by hiding one’s own identity. Spoofing can be done to hack the system, inject malware, or even steal sensitive information.
Yes, Spoofing can be done in different ways like phone calls, emails, websites, IP addresses, Domain Name Services (DNS), etc.
Phishing is the act of sending out attractive or tempting information as bulk emails, text messages, or even phone calls to a targeted number of audiences to gather their sensitive information like credit card numbers, bank account numbers, ATM pin, etc.
Hackers use the technique of port scanning to get information of available open ports & services on a specific host, in order to find information for malicious purposes.
SQL injection is a technique of web hacking that is used to gain access to sensitive and valuable data from a database by altering the original SQL statement. It is done by injecting some malicious SQL statements to get control of the database behind any web application. Usually, hackers do this to get access to the database or to surpass the security measures of any particular application.
Generally, footprinting is a method to gather all relevant information about any system or network, to find a way to penetrate into that system. This includes collecting all information about the organization, users, networks, hosts, etc. before invading the system. These are commonly asked Ethical Hacking Interview Questions and Answers for Fresher and Experienced candidates
The full form of DDoS is a “Distributed Denial of Service” attack.
The DDoS attack is an attempt by any hacker to disrupt the regular traffic of any targeted network or server by infusing a huge amount of fake client requests to keep the server busy, thereby denying its services for actual and useful client requests.
There are mainly three different types of DDoS attacks and they are:
Volumetric Attacks
Application Layer Attacks
Protocol Attacks
Here are the steps that are performed by the hacker:
Reconnaissance
Scanning and Enumeration
Gaining unauthorized access
Managing to continue getting access
Clear Tracks
Here is a brief description of each of the steps:
Reconnaissance: It’s the first step which includes gathering all the information about the targeted system or network and finding vulnerabilities and weak spots.
Scanning & Enumeration: In this step, the gathered information is scanned and scrutinized to test the system/network.
Gaining Unauthorized access: After the first two steps are successful, the hacker is now at the third step with having all the access to that targeted system/network.
Managing to continue getting access: Now that the hacker has access, he tries to install some scripts onto the system so that his access is retained for a long time.
Clear Tracks: In this last stage, the hacker removes all the traces of his interaction so that he can escape the security team.
A keylogger or keyboard logger is monitoring software that records and remembers every keystroke that is pressed on the keyboard. Generally, keyloggers are used by companies and their security staff to check and troubleshoot if there is any problem with their network/systems.
Hackers use keyloggers to gather IDs and passwords of the users to gain access to their accounts in an unauthorized manner.
These are the commonly asked Ethical Hacking Interview Questions for Freshers and Experienced candidates in an Interview.
Penetration testing is done to assess the security of IT systems. Some of the tools used for penetration testing are:
Nmap
Metasploit
Burp Suite
Aircrack-ng
Nessus
Ransomware is a malware which hackers use to restrict the original users from acquiring access to their system and personal files. They then demand a ransom which is generally the amount of money or very sensitive information to allow their access again.
Ransomware attacks can be categorized depending on the severity of the attacks
Screen lockers
Scareware
Encrypting ransomware
Basically, brute force is a trial-and-error technique for hacking passwords in order to gain access to any network or system. It can be implemented only if the hacker has a good knowledge of JavaScript and it is a very time-consuming process. Tools like hydra are available for brute force.
Trojans are also malicious software which is developed by hackers with the intention to gain access to specific targeted systems. Some of the trojans are:
Trojan droppers
Trojan downloader
Trojan rootkits
Ransomware
Trojan Backdoor
White hat hackers are specialist in security who is trained and certified in penetration testing. They are legally authorized to protect the information of systems of any organization.
Grey Hat hackers are the ones who want to learn the art of ethical hacking but sometimes they violate the standards even though they do not have any intention of performing any malicious activity.
Yes, there are plenty of Operating systems available that are generally used for hacking. These are
Parrot Security OS
Kali Linux
DEFT Linux
Network security toolkit
Caine
Pentoo Linux
Backbox
There are some specific languages used for hacking:
Python
Java
LISP
C/C++
Perl
Here are some of the attacks that are famous for attacks.
Denial of service
Fame WAP
Keylogger
Waterhole Attacks
Eavesdropping
Phishing
Clickjacking attacks
DOS or the Denial of Service attack is a malicious act of flooding a targeted network with tons of unused traffic in order to jam the network. This may not cause any serious effect on security or information but makes the website inaccessible by customers. The website owner of that network may have to pay loads of money and time to restore accessibility.
These are commonly asked Ethical Hacking Interview Questions and Answers for Experienced candidates in an interview
Here are a few types of DOS attacks:
SYN attack
Smurf attack
Viruses
Teardrop attack
Buffer Overflow attack
The CIA Triangle is the foundation of three pillars
Confidentiality
Integrity
Availability
Confidentiality: It refers to the practice of maintaining the secrecy of the information
Integrity: It refers to the practice of maintaining the information as it is i.e prevention of any alterations
Availability: It refers to the practice of making the data available to all authorized users at all times.
Encryption is used to maintain confidentiality whereas hashing is used to maintain the integrity of the data.
encoding is the process of using an algorithm for the conversion of a human-readable data to some unreadable values which may seem junk to anyone, but after decoding retains its original meaningful form.
Vulnerability is said to be a security loophole or weakness in the network or system and exploitation is the completion of a successful attack with the help of that particular vulnerability.
ARP Spoofing
DNS Spoofing
IP Spoofing
A firewall is a software or hardware wall installed in every system which acts as a filter and has the authority to allow or deny any traffic in order to protect the organization from outside attacks.
the bot is simply a piece of software or script that is designed by the hacker in order to attack at a faster speed than hum
SSL or Secured Socket layer is a type of secured communication system that is based on the peer-to-peer model. Here each connection is directly linked with a particular SSL session. An SSL session is a link created with the help of a handshaking protocol, between a client and the server.
These are commonly asked Ethical Hacking Interview Questions and Answers for Fresher candidates in an interview
SSL is meant to provide a secure connection between a browser and the server. Here are some of the components of SSL:
Handshake Protocol
Encryption Algorithms
Change Cipher Spec
SSL Record Protocol
Here are some of the best password-cracking techniques used by hackers:
Brute Force Attack
Rule Attack
Rainbow Table Attack
Syllable Attack
Hybrid Attack
Adware is an unwanted software that is used to automatically display advertisements, online or offline, on your mobile or computer screens without any option to disable it. This happens usually when you are using a Web browser.
Data Breach is a part of the cyber attack process which enables hackers to get access to any computer or network, in an unauthorized manner. And this helps them to steal confidential, private, or sensitive data of the customers or users.
Although there are hundreds of types of attacks that are performed by the cybercriminals, the most common of them are:
Phishing
Spyware
Broken/Misconfigured access control
Someone who is weak even in the basics of programming skills and performs cyber attacks using the very basic and simple software is known as a Script Kiddie.
Crypto-jacking, also known as malicious crypto mining is a kind of an online threat that uses various resources of machines in order to mine digital money such as Cryptocurrency. It is a simple process that doesn’t require any special machines as they can be carried out just on a computer or even a mobile device.
Goal
Deadline
Passed Deadline
There are several ways to protect your PC from hackers, the most important methods are:
Keep your Operating System updated
If you’re selling out any devices, format it first, as data can be leaked from that device if it reaches any criminal
Always keep your Wi-Fi password protected, never leave it open.
Choose the security question and answer carefully, i.e. do not keep it very obvious.
Do not save very sensitive information on the cloud platforms.
Cowpatty is a C-language based technique which is used to perform brute force dictionary attacks on the WPA- PSK protected Wi-Fi networks. These are the Commonly asked Ethical Hacking Interview Questions and Answers for Experienced candidates in an Interview.
In the Pharming technique, the attacker or the hacker makes concessions in the DNS (Domain Name Service) servers or even the user’s computer in order to redirect the user to a malicious website.
By using the defacement technique, the hacker is overpowered to replace the original website by a forged website that may or may not look similar to the original website and can contain the hacker’s name, images, messages, and even a piece of background music.
Social Engineering is the term used to hack humans and get personal or sensitive information like card numbers, passwords, etc. directly from the victim.
A Trojan is malicious software or code that seems very legitimate but is designed to unauthorizedly take control of the system. It is specially designed by hackers to disrupt or steal personal data or sensitive information from the computer/network.
This type of Trojan creates a hidden backdoor in the network or a system, which eventually provides unauthorized access to the hacker so that he can operate on that system remotely. This act is done to inject malware into the system or to steal data that can be sold in black markets.
These are a type of Trojan who specifically attacks online game players. The target of such malware is to purloin sensitive information like credit card details by hacking the account details of the gamers.
The Fake Anti-Virus Trojans pretend to be some antivirus software and then ask the users to pay money for scanning & detecting viruses and then removing them, which may or may not be fake.
The XSS or Cross-Site Scripting is a type of injection attack that occurs on the Client-side. In XSS, the hacker injects a malicious piece of code or script to an original web application, which eventually leads to disclosure of various cookie information, defacement, and more.
Here are three types of Cross-Site Scripting:
Stored XSS: In the Stored XSS, the malicious piece of code/scripts are stored on the server permanently, and each time anyone accesses the particular application, the script is automatically executed.
Reflected XSS: In Reflected XSS, whenever the client sends a request to the server, a malicious request is sent, and the result of which is reflected onto the Client’s side.
DOM-based XSS: In DOM-based XSS, there is no transfer of any kind of malicious script, it resides and is executed in the Client phase only.
The various types of cookie attributes:
HTTP Only
Secure
Domain
Path
Expires
Cyber Kill Chain is a series of steps that determine and identify the stages of any cyber attack from an early stage. And it is very useful for the understanding of APTs i.e. Application Persistent Attacks, various security breaches, and helps us tackle ransomware attacks.
These are commonly asked Ethical Hacking Interview Questions and Answers for freshers and Experienced candidates in an interview
There are a total of 7 stages in a Cyber Kill Attack. These are:
Reconnaissance
Weaponization
Delivery
Exploitation
Installation
Command and Control
Actions and Objectives
Generally, there is a vulnerability in a system that is unknown to the security personnel and the attackers use that loophole to hack into the system. The time duration between the actual attack and the security team getting aware of that vulnerability is known as the Zero Days.
Here are a few common types of Vulnerabilities:
Broken Authentication
Misconfigurations in security
Exposure of sensitive data
Insecure Deserialization
Deficient monitoring and logging
Cross-Site Scripting
Usage of components/devices with known vulnerabilities
Injection
XML External Entities
Defect in access controls
Hashing is a process of generating a string of text using a very complicated mathematical function, and this string is computed at both ends to ensure that the transmitted data has not been altered.
The type of data gathered in the Enumeration phase includes:
Network resources
Names of groups and users
Applications
Names of machines
DNS information
SNMP information
Here are the elements that a hacker tries to know:
Window size
TTL
TOS
DF
MIB or the Management Information Base is a virtual database. Basically, it consists of all the formal descriptions of every network object that is possible to manage using the SNMP. It is a hierarchical database and all the objects of the database are assigned an OID (Object Identified) and are handled using these OIDs only.
Here are some of the computer-based social engineering attacks:
Baiting
Phishing
Online Scams
Some methods which are used to prevent or avoid ARP Poisoning are:
Use of packet filter
Avoiding trust relationships
Using ARP Spoofing Detection Software
Use of Cryptographic Network Protocols
SNMP is the short form of simple network management protocol that is a part of TCP/IP protocol, and it is used for monitoring as well as managing different host routers and devices on a network remotely.
Some of the spoofing attacks are:
IP Spoofing attack
DNS Spoofing attack
ARP Spoofing attack
Media access control (MAC)
A worm is also a type of malicious software with the specialty of self-replication. Once executed it keeps duplicating itself on the system as well as on any network.
As the name of this malware suggests that it is specifically designed to spy any organization person by getting access to the complete system files camera and voice inputs and outputs and keylogging as well.
A botnet is generally a network of various bots. And the specific purpose of creating a botnet by a hacker is to use it as a source for any DDoS or DOS attack.
A spam email or an SMS, that is an advertising or marketing information, which is sent to a huge number of users without taking their consent but is not intended for anything malicious.
Scanning which is done on the hacker’s side is the process of getting information on the IP of the various hosts of the network along with its TCP and UDP Port numbers, operating system details as well as protocol version using some specific scanning tools.
Various types of scanning are
Network scanning
Port scanning
Vulnerability scanning
Yes, a Vulnerability Assessment is a process of searching for flaws and loopholes in any network or application whereas penetration testing is the process of searching for vulnerabilities that are exploitable just like a real hacker.
Spoofing, Tampering, Reputation, Information Disclosure, Denial of Service and Elevation of Privilege is acronymed as STRIDE
The various types of hacking are:
Network Hacking
Password Hacking
Computer Hacking
Website Hacking
Email Hacking
Foot-printing is the process of gathering all the data and information about the targeted network or system even before trying to access and acquire that system
Here are the techniques:
Open source Foot-printing
Scanning
Stack fingerprinting
Network enumeration
Network sniffing can be used for both ethical and unethical purposes. For ethical use, the network administrator can use the network sniffers for analysis of the network and as a monitoring tool. And for unethical purposes, the hackers can use network sniffers unethically for identifying the targeted systems on a network and gather information and hijack sensitive data. id.
Here is the list of such programs:
Kali Linux penetration software
Metasploit
Hydra hacking software
Nessus vulnerability scanner
Cain and Abel hacking software
Metasploit by Rapid 7
Most hackers use Python language as the scripting language and the main reason is that it has some very powerful libraries which are pre-assembled in it and provide very intense functionality that is very valuable for hackers
Here are some countermeasures:
Router access password
Disable SSID1
Changing if the default SSID
Access Control is the act of restricting or permitting users to access particular resources
These are commonly asked Ethical Hacking Interview Questions and Answers for Fresher candidates in an interview
The term Cyber-extortionist is the term used to describe the type of cyber attack whose purpose is to demand money and get monetary benefits from the victim, for example, ransomware;
To detect vulnerabilities for prevention from attacks, we can use Nessus or Acunetix software.
Usually, web application firewalls are used to detect such vulnerabilities. And we can also use software like Zap, and Burp-Suite for the same.
A different method is used to mitigate any SQL Injection.
Parameterized queries should be used so that the developer is forced to pass parameters in the SQL queries and define all SQL codes.
The database as well as the application server should be kept updated.
Inputs should be sanitized and input validation should be appropriate
Web application firewalls should be implemented to filter any malicious input.
Some of the advantages of Ethical Hacking are:
Ethical hacking is helpful in fighting cyber crimes and attacks
Ethical hackers can use preventative measures to save data and information from being hacked.
Used to detect vulnerabilities early, that can be fixed to minimize the risk of attacks
Helps provide good security to banks and financial institutions and department
Prevents hackers from getting access to any particular system or network
Some of the disadvantages of Ethical Hacking are:
In the process of it, there is some chance that the data of any organization gets corrupted by ethical hackers, by mistake.
If someone fraud is a part of the ethical hacking team, it may steal sensitive information
When hackers exploit the vulnerabilities in a DNS in order to divert the original traffic of a server to a different false server, this is known as DNS cache poisoning. This act is also termed as DNS Spoofing
A rough DHCP server is a service that is set up by hackers for the purpose of man in middle attack, sniffing or reconnaissance. These servers can be a modem or a router and are not discoverable by the network administrators
NTP is an abbreviation for network time protocol and it is used to synchronize various computers that are on a network. It takes NTP less than 10 milliseconds to maintain time on a public internet connection. It uses UDP port number 123 for its general communication purposes.
Scanning takes place in the ‘pre-attack’ phase of the pen test.
Attack event when is Wi-Fi alternative to the phishing attack. In this attack, the connection of the users is monitored and then the information is stolen from that monitored and recorded data.
In the MITM Attack, the hacker obstructs the communication between two ends of a connection. The main purpose is to intercept useful information.
confidently ace that interview and get your hands on your dream job!
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O7 Services is a leading technology partner with ISO 9001:2015 certification, innovative solutions, and 24/7 support, ensuring business success in the rapidly evolving tech landscape.
