Updated March 6, 2023
Introduction to Ethical Hacking Interview Questions and Answers
The term ethical hacking can describe hacking that is done by any company or any individual, which will help identify potential threats on any computer or any network. A hacker involved in this process must attempt to bypass system security and look for any weak points that can be chosen and attacked by malicious hackers. Let us have a look at a few questions that can be asked in an interview.
Now, if you are looking for a job related to Ethical Hacking, you need to prepare for the 2023 Ethical Hacking Interview Questions. Every interview is indeed different as per the different job profiles. Here, we have prepared the important Ethical Hacking Interview Questions and Answers, which will help you succeed in your interview.
In this 2023 Ethical Hacking Interview Questions article, we shall present the 10 most essential and frequently used Ethical Hacking interview questions and answers. These interview questions are divided into two parts are as follows:
Part 1 – Ethical Hacking Interview Questions (Basic)
This first part covers basic Interview Questions and Answers.
Q1. Explain all hacking stages in detail.
Answer:
Whenever the process of hacking or targeting a machine takes place, it goes through below five stages:
- Reconnaissance- This is the initial step where the hacker acquires all information about the target.
- Scanning- This stage involves going through and scrutinizing all gathered information during the reconnaissance phase. It can be used to examine who is the victim. The hacker can choose automated tools in the scanning phase, involving port scanners, mappers and vulnerability scanners.
- Gaining access- This is the step where the actual hacking takes place. The hacker can now attempt upon exploiting different vulnerabilities that are found during the above two phases.
- Maintaining access- Once the access is gained, hackers can keep the access as it is. This will help further scrutinise data, and all attacks will be secure through exclusive access to backdoors, rootkits, and Trojans.
- Covering tracks- Once all information is obtained and the access is maintained, then the hacker can cover their tracks and traces to avoid detection. This also enables them to continue using a hacked system and helps avoid any legal actions.
Q2. Explain the concept of footprinting and further explain the techniques used for the same.
Answer:
This is the common Ethical Hacking Interview Question asked in an interview. Footprinting is usually referred to as accumulating and discovering information about the target network before users attempt to gain access. The techniques used in footprinting are as below:
- Open source footprinting- This technique helps the user to search for all the information related to administrator contact. This information can later be used to guess the correct password when being used in social engineering.
- Network enumeration: This technique is used when the hacker tries to identify and get the names of domain names and tries to look for network blocks that are supposedly targeted.
- Scanning: Once the hacker is able to identify the network, the next step is to investigate active IP addresses on the network.
- Stack fingerprinting: This would be the last step or technique which should be used once the port and host intended are mapped.
Q3. What is network sniffing?
Answer:
Network sniffing term is used when a user wants to enable real-time monitoring and analyse data packets flowing over computer networks. Hackers can make use of sniffing tools and is used for ethical and unethical purposes. These can be used to steal information or manage different networks. Network administrators use sniffers as a network monitoring and analysis tool. In an unethical way, it can be used by cybercriminals for wrong purposes like identity usurpation, email, sensitive data hijacking and more.
Q4. What is a DOS attack, and what are the common forms of DOC attack?
Answer:
Denial of Service can be considered a malicious attack on a network that can be done by flooding the network with no use traffic. Although it is not a threat to information or a security breach, it can cost the website owner a large amount of money and time. These attacks can be as below:
- Buffer Overflow Attacks
- SYN Attack
- Teardrop Attack
- Smurf Attack
- Viruses
Q5. What are the ways of avoiding or preventing ARP poisoning?
Answer:
ARP poisoning is a type of network attack, and it can be avoided in the following way.
- Use packet filtering: When you use packet filters, you can filter out and block packets with a different or conflicting source address information.
- Avoiding trust relationships: Organizations should follow protocols much and avoid relying on trust relationships as little as possible.
- Use ARP spoofing detection software: There are some programs or applications that inspect and certify data before it gets transmitted, which helps block the data that is spoofed.
- Use cryptographic network protocols: ARP spoofing attacks can be avoided by making use of protocols like SSH, TLS, and HTTPS, which ensure that data is sent in the encrypted format before transmission and after the reception.
Part 2 – Ethical Hacking Interview Questions (Advanced)
Let us now have a look at the advanced Interview Questions and Answers.
Q6. What is the difference between phishing and spoofing?
Answer:
Phishing and Spoofing are two different things. Phishing downloads malware to your system or network, and spoofing, on the other hand, tricks your system into surrendering sensitive data to cybercriminals. Phishing can be said as a technique for recovery, while spoofing is the one used for delivery.
Q7. What is the burp suite, and what are the tools that it contains?
Answer:
This is the most popular Ethical Hacking Interview Question asked in an interview. Burp Suite can be said as a platform that can be used for attacking different network applications. It contains different tools that a hacker would need for attacking any system. The functionalities that are used in the Burp suite are:
- Proxy Repeater
- Spider Decoder
- Scanner Comparer
- Intruder Sequencer
Q8. What is MIB?
Answer:
Management Information Base is a virtual database containing all formal descriptions of network objects and how they can be managed using SNMP. The MIB database is hierarchical, and in each of these managed objects are addressed through the different object identifiers, which are known as OIDs.
Q9. Name the different types of ethical hackers.
Answer:
There are four different types of ethical hackers. They are as below:
- Certified ethical hacker
- A white box penetration tester
- A black box penetration tester
- Cyber warrior or the Grey box hacker
Q10. Name some standard tools which ethical hackers use.
Answer:
To facilitate the task of hacking and speed up the process, hackers have created tools that make their task easy. These are:
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