Every day we come across multiple news about website hacking. The number is not decreasing but growing every day. So a question that comes to our mind is this, is website hacking such an easy task that anyone can do it? If yes then how to hack a website and what knowledge is required for hacking a website?
But before that let’s understand why websites get hacked. You know the answer. These dark activities are to get data from the website. These data may include login credentials, bank account credentials, and much more. It means these hacks can not only put your website down but even empty the bank account. Scary, right?
However, you can safeguard your website from these hacks by implementing safety features.
Before looking at how you can safeguard your website, let’s first learn how to hack a website in a few easy steps.
What is Web hacking
Web hacking is a process of exploiting the vulnerabilities of a website to extract data from it. It can be ethical as well as unethical. Companies allow hackers to exploit the vulnerabilities of their websites in order to improve the security of the site, in this case, it is considered ethical hacking.
However, when you don’t have permission to exploit the vulnerabilities of the website it is considered unethical hacking. Unethical web hacking is illegal, so you should always get permission before hacking any website.
Step-by-Step Guide to Web Application Hacking Techniques
Let’s break it down into smaller steps:-
1. Identify the technologies used by the web server:
Identifying the tech used in building the website is the first and foremost step in the How to Hack a Website guide. If you guess it right, you can exploit the known vulnerabilities of that technology and easily hack the website.
Follow to below given steps to identify the technologies used by the server or involved in URL hacking:
- Start by examining the HTTP response headers and the HTML source code to find clues about the server and framework used.
- Search for version numbers, server names, and other identifying information.
- Now, you can use this information to search for known vulnerabilities in the technology stack.
- Check for any well-known technologies, as they might have specific vulnerabilities or common misconfigurations.
- You can also use any specialized scanner like WPscan for WordPress, nikto, or Burp Suite to identify technologies and potential vulnerabilities.
2. Launch general-purpose scanners:
The next step in our How to Hack a Website guide is using general-purpose scanners that will help you find something interesting or gain insights. follow the below-given steps to launch the general-purpose scanner:
- Use tools like Nmap, Zmap, or Masscan to scan for open ports and services.
- Perform a basic vulnerability scan with tools like Nessus, OpenVAS, or Nexpose.
- These tools can help you identify potential vulnerabilities and misconfigurations in the system.
3. Perform initial checks:
After performing the general purpose scanner, the third step in our How to Hack a Website is to perform initial checks such as:
- Check for robots.txt. Find out the parts of the website that are not intended to be crawled by web crawlers.
- Look for a sitemap.xml file to find out about the website’s structure and organization.
- Check for a 404 error page to understand how the server handles non-existent resources.
- Perform an SSL/TLS scan if the website uses HTTPS to identify potential weaknesses in the encryption setup.
4. Spider the web page:
The fourth step in our How to Hack a Website guide is Spidering web crawling. Also called web scraping, is a process used while hacking to extract information from a website. They are named web crawlers as they use web crawlers or spiders to help you find all possible files, folders, and parameters. Check for special findings and note that any new directory discovered during brute-forcing or spidering should be spidered.
- Use tools like Burp Suite, Zed Attack Proxy (ZAP), or w3af to spider the website and discover all possible files, folders, and parameters.
- Check for special findings such as directories, files, or parameters that should not be publicly accessible.
- Keep track of the directory or call tree of the application and all identified access points for further testing.
5. Directory Brute-Forcing:
The fifth step in How to Hack a Website guide is directory brute-forcing. After extracting the files and directories it’s time to brute force all of the extracted data. A brute force attack is a process of cracking the password, encryption keys, and login credentials by using a trial and error method. Being the simplest way of getting unauthorized access to the system or network, it becomes a crucial step involved in website hacking.
- Some of the well-known brute force tools are DirBuster, Gobuster, or Feroxbuster which you can use to brute force directories and subdirectories.
- Further, the test discovered directories for new files and subdirectories.
- Moreover, keep track of new directories and subdirectories for further testing.
6. Check for backups:
Now in our How to Hack a Website guide it’s time to test if you can find backups of discovered files by appending common backup extensions.
- Test if you can find backups of discovered files by appending common backup extensions like .bak, .old, or .backup.
- Check for backup files that might contain sensitive information or configuration details.
7. Brute-Force parameters:
One of the most important steps in our How to Hack a Website guide is Brute-Force parameters. Burp Suite is one of the best tools for checking the Brute-Force parameters.
- Test for hidden parameters by using tools like Burp Suite or ZAP.
- Identify parameters that might be used for input validation, filtering, or manipulation.
8. Identify and check endpoints accepting user input:
The last step in our How to Hack a Website guide is to identify all endpoints that accept user input, such as login forms, search bars, or upload forms.
- Test these endpoints for various vulnerabilities, such as SQL injection, Cross-Site Scripting (XSS), or Command Injection.
- Use tools like SQLMap, NoSQLMap, or DVWA to automate some of the testing.
In Simple Terms:
Long story short; web application hacking techniques involve various steps. Our How to Hack a Website guide starts with checking the hosting of the website. In most cases, it can be hosted on Nginx or apache. Apache is one of the most popular application servers. On the website, there is a database that contains all the information. However, to access this database the hacker has to first access the server.
But what hackers do is that they bypass the route and directly target the database by running SQL injection. This SQL injection bypasses some of the logic of application servers to get unauthorized access to the database, listing down all these different user names, etc from the backend system.
How to Hack a Website?
Web application hacking techniques for a website built on WordPress is very easy. The answer to How to Hack a Website built on wordpress is given below:
Step-1:
Identify a vulnerable plugin: The “reflex-gallery” plugin is a popular vulnerable plugin for WordPress. You can download it from the Exploit Database or create your own malicious plugin.
Step-2:
Upload the plugin: Now, log in to the WordPress dashboard, go to the Plugins section, and click on “Add New”. Then, click on “Upload Plugin”, browse for the downloaded zip file, and click “Install Now”. Once uploaded, activate the plugin.
Step-3:
Execute the exploit: Use the Metasploit framework to execute the exploit for the vulnerable plugin.
- Start Metasploit: `msfconsole`
- Load the Metasploit module: `use exploit/unix/webapp/wp_reflex_gallery`
- Set the RHOSTS variable to the target IP address: `set RHOSTS <target_ip>`
- Run the exploit: `run`
Let’s look at the example of the commands you can use:
“`bash
msfconsole
use exploit/unix/webapp/wp_reflex_gallery
set RHOSTS <target_ip>
run
“`
Replace `<target_ip>` with the IP address of the target WordPress website.
Disclaimer:
Remember, these How to Hack a Website steps should only be performed with explicit permission from the website owner. Unauthorized exploitation is illegal and unethical.
To hack this website you need to target the application server and run SQL injection. Remember, this is a general guide and might not cover all the vulnerabilities a website could have. Always ensure you have explicit permission to test the security of a website, and never exploit vulnerabilities without permission.
Also Read: Cloning Voices- OpenAI’s Voice Engine Sparks Ethical Debate