Ethical Hacking Workshop

6

Gaining Access

Once the target has been scanned and any vulnerabilities and potential access points have been identified, the gaining access phase begins. If the reconnaissance and scanning aspects have been thoroughly carried out, you should have a good understanding of the targeted environment, such as the network ranges, operating systems, and services running in the network. With this knowledge, you can begin attacking the network and attempting to gain access to the target environment. Generally, if the previous steps have been undertaken correctly, the attack to gain initial access should go smoothly.

In this chapter, we will cover the following main topics:

• Social engineering
• Phishing
• IP address sniffing and spoofing
• Code-based attacks ...