Many inexperienced hackers misunderstand the structured process required to carry out a successful intrusion. Instead of following a disciplined approach, they often rush directly to exploitation without completing the necessary groundwork to ensure the attack succeeds or remains undetected.

This post outlines a complete hacking methodology—from beginning to end—while referencing common tools and techniques used at each stage.

Step 1: Reconnaissance and Planning

Effective reconnaissance and planning are the foundation of successful hacking. Skilled hackers typically spend two to three times as much effort gathering intelligence as executing the actual attack. It is common for this phase to last weeks or even months before any exploitation attempt is made.

Because most exploits depend heavily on specific operating systems, applications, open ports, and running services, this information must be collected in advance. Skipping reconnaissance often leads to failed attacks, exposure, or both. Despite its importance, beginners frequently neglect this stage because they are eager to move straight to exploitation.

Reconnaissance generally falls into two broad categories: passive and active.

Passive Reconnaissance

Passive reconnaissance involves collecting intelligence about a target without directly interacting with it or by blending in with normal, legitimate traffic.

Tools such as Netcraft can be used to identify website details, including the web server type, operating system, reboot history, and underlying technologies—all essential data before an attack. FOCA can also be leveraged to extract metadata from publicly available documents hosted on a target’s website.

Additional passive techniques include DNS and SNMP enumeration, dumpster diving, social engineering, mining social networking platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn, and using search engines through Google hacking, among other methods.

Active Reconnaissance

Active reconnaissance requires direct interaction with the target by sending network packets and analyzing the responses. While this approach yields more precise and reliable results, it also introduces greater risk, as any interaction exposes the attacker’s IP address.

Tools such as Nmap, Hping3, Netdiscover, p0F, and Xprobe2 are commonly used to identify open ports, active services, and operating systems on remote systems.

This phase may also involve network enumeration. Techniques like banner grabbing and the use of vulnerability scanners—including Nexpose, Nikto, and Retina—are often incorporated during active reconnaissance.

Step 2: Gaining Access (Exploitation)

Exploitation can be carried out in numerous ways, and effective attackers often rely on creativity to identify multiple avenues of attack. While Metasploit is a powerful exploitation framework, relying on it exclusively is risky, as antivirus vendors rapidly develop detection signatures whenever new exploits are released.

After completing comprehensive reconnaissance and identifying relevant services, ports, and applications, vulnerability databases such as SecurityFocus and TechNet should be consulted to locate known weaknesses and available exploits.

Attackers should consider how each protocol used by the system or network might be misused. Man-in-the-middle attacks should always be evaluated as a possibility, and social engineering should never be dismissed as an effective method.

The chosen attack strategy will vary depending on whether access is local or remote. Physical access to a network significantly expands available options, while remote attacks typically present fewer vectors but can still be highly destructive.

Step 3: Privilege Escalation

In many cases, initial access is obtained with only standard user-level permissions. This is particularly common with client-side attacks that target vulnerable user applications such as web browsers, Adobe Flash, or Adobe Reader.

The ultimate objective is to obtain root or system administrator privileges, which provide unrestricted control over the system or network. Privilege escalation techniques are used to achieve this. Similarly, legitimate user accounts on websites or local networks may sometimes be elevated to administrative levels.

There are situations where compromising one machine with limited privileges allows an attacker to pivot within the network and gain higher-level access on another system.

When Metasploit’s Meterpreter payload is available, the getsystem command can be executed to cycle through fifteen known privilege escalation techniques in an attempt to obtain administrative rights.

Once again, social engineering should not be overlooked, as administrative credentials can often be acquired simply by requesting them under the right circumstances.

Step 4: Establishing Persistence (Backdoors or Listeners)

After successful exploitation and privilege escalation, maintaining access becomes essential. This is typically accomplished by installing a persistent listener or rootkit that survives system reboots and allows future access.

Such persistence mechanisms may include tools like Netcat, interactive command shells, VNC, or Meterpreter sessions.

Step 5: Data Extraction

The primary motivation behind most intrusions is to access and remove valuable information. This data may include credit card records, personally identifiable information (PII), intellectual property, or other sensitive assets.

Data must be exfiltrated in a manner that avoids detection by system administrators and, ideally, is encrypted. Tools such as Recub and Cryptcat are designed to facilitate stealthy data removal.

Meterpreter also provides built-in upload and download capabilities, enabling attackers to transfer malicious payloads to the target system and retrieve sensitive data.

Step 6: Covering Tracks

To prevent attribution, attackers must eliminate evidence of their activity. This may involve deleting log files, removing uploaded tools, and clearing command histories.

Metasploit’s Meterpreter includes scripts such as killav to disable antivirus software and the clearev command to erase Windows event logs.

This structured overview of the hacking methodology is intended to help novice hackers develop a clearer understanding of the stages involved in a complete attack lifecycle.