Are you confident in the security of your software systems? If you haven’t tested them against real-world attacks, the answer should be no. Low code and malicious AI models, known as 'dark LLMs,' have lowered the barrier to entry for bad actors, flooding the landscape with more attackers constantly looking for tiny loopholes to exploit. 

It takes organizations an average of 292 days to identify and contain a breach, giving bad actors a wide window of opportunity for exploitation. While vulnerabilities remain undetected, it’s a race against the clock between bad actors and organizations. To win the “who finds it first” contest, passive defenses alone won’t help you. 

Ethical hacking enables organizations to proactively identify and address potential weaknesses using the same methods as cybercriminals, legally and in a controlled environment. This approach can be a game-changer in strengthening your security posture.

Ethical Hacking Explained: How Does it Work?

Ethical hacking is a security strategy in which authorized parties try to hack your systems. They use the techniques a real hacker would use to exploit the system but operate in a controlled and legal environment. 

Those who perform this process are known as ethical hackers. Their goal is to find and fix vulnerabilities to prevent real hackers from exploiting them, thus helping organizations improve their security posture.  Steps in ethical hacking typically include:

• Scoping: Defining the scope of the attack. This includes identifying target systems, testing boundaries, and any restrictions to ensure a controlled and authorized testing process. 
• Reconnaissance: Collecting information about the target system, including network topology, publicly available data, employee details, URLs, and APIs. This step helps map out potential entry points before moving into active scanning.
• Scanning: In network testing, this includes open ports and misconfigured services. It involves detecting vulnerable endpoints, exposed APIs, security misconfigurations, and outdated dependencies for web applications.
• Exploitation: Attempting to exploit vulnerabilities to demonstrate potential impact.
• Post-Exploitation: Maintaining access and identifying deeper systemic issues while ensuring no harm is caused. Ethical hackers also provide remediation suggestions to help organizations address identified weaknesses effectively.
• Reporting: Providing detailed documentation about the identified vulnerabilities and actionable risk mitigation recommendations. This phase is also crucial for meeting compliance requirements since it provides organizations with a clear record of security gaps and remediation efforts.

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Every organization, regardless of size or industry, needs ethical hacking because regulations often mandate at least one external penetration test per various kinds of applications each year. 

What Vulnerabilities Do Ethical Hackers Find?

Ethical hacking can discover a large number of vulnerabilities in a system. They can be categorized as:

• Application Layer: Issues like SQL injection, cross-site scripting (XSS), and insecure authentication mechanisms.
• Configuration: Misconfigurations in servers, firewalls, or cloud environments, as well as unpatched software or dependencies.
• Access Control: Weak authentication, broken access control, or excessive permissions granted to users or applications.

The Three Ethical Hacking Methodologies To Know

1. White Box Testing

In white box testing (also known as glass box testing), ethical hackers have full access to the organization's source code and/or internal systems, architecture, and networks before testing begins. Since they have a deep understanding beforehand, they can identify deeply embedded vulnerabilities in your system, such as logic flaws and authentication bypass issues. 

This method often includes code reviews and static application security testing (SAST). It can be faster than other tests due to the ethical hackers’ prior knowledge of the systems and helps identify hidden vulnerabilities other tests wouldn’t be able to spot. Terra’s agentic AI platform operates a white box testing method, enabling its AI agents to perform continuous in-depth pen testing that is context-aware and tailored to organizations’ unique risks. 

2. Black Box Testing

Black box testing is the polar opposite of white box testing. In this approach, ethical hackers do not have any information about the system they will attack. They rely on external reconnaissance, including OSINT (Open Source Intelligence), to gather information before launching attacks.

Black box testing closely simulates real-world attack scenarios and provides valuable insights into an organization’s security posture. However, it is time-consuming, as ethical hackers need to gather and analyze internal information from scratch, and it may overlook deeply embedded vulnerabilities due to the lack of prior knowledge about the system.

3. Grey Box Testing

Grey box testing sits between the white and black box testing types. In grey box testing, ethical hackers have partial information, such as credentials or architectural diagrams. For example, testers might receive admin-level credentials but not have source code access. Grey box testing is more efficient than black box testing and identifies surface-level and deeply embedded vulnerabilities. However, the testing overage might change based on the initially provided information.

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8 Types of Ethical Hacking

1. Web Application Penetration Testing

Web application penetration testing targets vulnerabilities identified in frameworks like the OWASP Top 10, including SQL injection, cross-site scripting (XSS), insecure authentication mechanisms, and session management flaws. To perform this testing, ethical hackers use a mix of automated tools and manual testing. Some of their everyday actions include:

• Scanning for outdated libraries and software.
• Testing input fields for injection flaws.
• Evaluating authentication mechanisms for weaknesses.
• Accessing web application endpoints.

This testing is indispensable for industries handling sensitive data across multiple applications, such as e-commerce platforms, SaaS providers like Salesforce, and online banking systems. It enables organizations to uncover complex, application-specific weaknesses and evaluate their exploitability in real-world scenarios, ensuring robust security postures and adherence to industry standards.

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2. Network Penetration Testing

Network penetration testing evaluates the security of an organization’s network infrastructure. It identifies vulnerabilities like misconfigured firewalls and routers, open ports, unnecessary services, and weak or default credentials. This type of testing is essential for large organizations with global IT infrastructures like AWS or Azure.

Ethical hackers often use network tools like Wireshark, Nmap, or Nessus. They also leverage techniques to find weak points in an organization's network infrastructure, such as:

• Mapping the network to identify connected devices.
• Testing firewall rules and configurations.
• VLAN hopping and ARP spoofing.
• Attempting to bypass Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS) and Intrusion Prevention Systems (IPS).

3. Cloud Penetration Testing

Cloud penetration testing focuses on the security of cloud environments, identifying vulnerabilities like misconfigurations, identity and access management (IAM) weaknesses, and insecure APIs. With cloud platforms like AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud becoming primary infrastructure for businesses, cloud penetration testing is essential for organizations handling sensitive data, ensuring compliance, and mitigating risks in multi-cloud environments.

During cloud penetration testing, ethical hackers perform tasks like:

• Identifying misconfigured cloud storage (e.g., exposed S3 buckets, misconfigured Blob storage).
• Testing IAM roles, permissions, and privilege escalation paths.
• Analyzing API security and access control vulnerabilities.
• Evaluating container security and serverless function exposure.

4. Social Engineering Testing

Social engineering testing replicates real-world scenarios where threat actors exploit human behavior to gain unauthorized access to sensitive information through phishing, pretexting, or baiting. 

Ethical hackers simulate these attacks by creating fake scenarios such as phishing emails or impersonation calls to test employee awareness of security protocols. They first gather knowledge of the organization’s workflows and key personnel, then leverage email servers or specialized tools to simulate phishing attacks. 

This testing is critical for identifying vulnerabilities in organizational security, such as gaps in employee training, inadequate awareness programs, and flaws in identity verification processes. 

5. Wireless Penetration Testing

Wireless penetration testing helps organizations identify vulnerabilities in Wi-Fi networks, such as weak encryption, rogue access points, and insecure configurations. Retail chains like Starbucks, which has public Wi-Fi, universities, campus-wide networks, or airports offering free Internet access, must perform wireless penetration testing.

Ethical hackers typically evaluate wireless security with tools like Aircrack-ng, Kismet, or Kali Linux, as well as techniques like:

• Testing WPA3 configurations.
• Simulating EAP (Extensible Authentication Protocol) attacks
• Monitoring wireless traffic for unencrypted data.
• Attempting to crack encryption keys.
• Detecting rogue access points.

6. Physical Security Testing

Physical security testing evaluates the effectiveness of an organization’s physical defenses (think offices, data centers, manufacturing plants, or research labs). This testing helps identify physical security issues like weak entry passes, lack of surveillance, and physical tampering risks. To attempt to bypass physical security measures and gain access to restricted areas, devices, or information, ethical hackers often use techniques like:

• Searching through discarded materials like trash bins or recycling to find sensitive information.
• Lock picking.
• Track blind spots in surveillance cameras, as well as employee movements.
• Clone or intercept RFID badges.
  

7. Mobile Application Security Testing

In mobile application security testing, ethical hackers analyze the app’s source code for flaws such as hardcoded credentials, weak encryption, or insecure data storage. They also assess API interactions to ensure a secure data flow and simulate real-world threats by exploiting mobile-specific vulnerabilities. 

The process includes manual penetration tests replicating attacks like reverse engineering and privilege escalation. Hackers often leverage tools such as MobSF for static and dynamic analysis and Burp Suite Mobile for testing API traffic. 

8. Red Teaming 

Red teaming tests the security posture of the entire organization, including technical defenses, detection capabilities, and incident response. Compared to traditional penetration testing, which focuses on identifying vulnerabilities, red teaming evaluates how well blue teams (defensive security teams) can defend against stealthy and persistent attacks similar to those used by highly skilled hackers and cybercriminal groups like nation-state attackers.

Ethical hackers conducting red team exercises use techniques such as:

• Living Off the Land (LotL) attacks
• Fileless malware attacks
• Credential dumping and pass the hash attacks
• Domain fronting
• C2 evasions
• Lateral movement
• Privilege escalation

Closing the Gap on Ethical Hacking Strategies 

Ethical hacking has long been a crucial part of cybersecurity, helping organizations identify vulnerabilities by simulating real-world attacks. However, with cyber threats becoming more advanced and attack surfaces more complex, relying on traditional, one-time penetration tests is no longer sufficient. Ethical hacking is still essential but must be integrated into a continuous, adaptive security strategy that keeps pace with evolving threats.

Terra’s agentic-AI platform employs AI-driven agents that conduct real-time, continuous pen testing assessments across an organization’s web applications. Unlike traditional methods with fixed test periods, Terra’s agents offer greater speed, depth, and scalability, simulating current attack vectors for more accurate testing. With an integrated human-in-the-loop mechanism, Terra ensures reliability with AI and actionable results while continuously identifying and addressing vulnerabilities in real-time, effectively reducing threat exposure. Learn more here.

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