Today we are going to discuss basic Hacking Terminologies which may one day render useful in case of a cyber attack.
We live in an era of unprecedented cyberattacks, where malicious campaigns, both personal and governmental, are carried out across laptops and wireless networks.
Thus it is advised to acquaint oneself with a basic glossary of hacking terminologies. Staying naive can possibly cost you a lot in case of a cyber attack.
List of important Hacking Terminologies
- Authorization –The process of determining what types of activities are permitted. Usually, authorization is in the context of authentication.
- Asynchronous attacks – This Hacking Terminology is used when Attacks take advantage of dynamic system actions especially by exploiting an ability to manipulate the timing of those actions.
- Active attack – This Hacking Terminology has used when a form of attack in which data is actually modified, corrupted, or destroyed.
- Alias- You’ll need an alias a false identity to conceal a genuine one in the physical or digital worlds.
- Attribution – is the process of establishing who is behind a hack. Often, attribution is the most difficult part of responding to a major breach since experienced hackers may hide behind layers of online services that mask their true location and identity.
- Audit – A check of system security. This usually includes a review of documents, Procedure and system configurations.
- Adware – is software designed to force pre-chosen ads to display on your system.
- Antispyware
- Buffer Overflow – Buffer Overflow is a flaw that occurs when more data is written to a block of memory, or buffer than the buffer is allocated to hold.
- Bugs – A bug is a flaw or error in a software program. Some are harmless or merely annoying, but some can be exploited by hackers.
- Blackhat – A black hat hacker is someone who hacks for personal gain and/or who engages in illicit and unsanctioned activities. As opposed to white hack hackers (see below), who traditionally hack in order to alert companies and improve services, black hat hackers may instead sell the weaknesses they discover to other hackers or use them.
- Bitcoin – This Hacking Terminology is used when a digital currency that you can freely trade and use to make anonymous purchases, both online and increasingly in the physical world.
- Clone phishing – Clone phishing is the modification of an existing, legitimate email with a false link to trick the recipient into providing personal information.
- Cracker – A cracker is one who modifies the software to access the features which are considered undesirable by the person cracking the software, especially copy protection features.
- Cross-site Scripting – Cross-site scripting (XSS) is a type of computer security
vulnerability found in web applications . XSS enables attackers to inject client-side scripts into web pages viewed by other users.
- Compiler – A compiler is a program that translates the high-level language (source code in a programming language) into executable machine language. Compilers are sometimes rewritten to create a backdoor without changing a program’s source code.
- Crash – A sudden and unintended Failure.
- Cookies
- cryptography
- Decryption – Break a code, with or without a key.
- Digital Certificate – A digital passport or stamp of approval that proves the identity of a person, website or service on the internet.
- Data-driven attack – A form of attack that is encoded in innocuous-seeming data which is executed by users or other software to implement an attack.
- DNS spoofing – This Hacking Terminology has used when a form of spoofing which exploits the Domain Name Service (DNS) by which networks map textual domain names onto the IP numbers by which they actually route data packets.
- Dark web – The dark web is made up of sites that are not indexed by Google and are only accessible through specialty networks such as Tor. Often, the dark web is used by website operators who want to remain anonymous. Everything on the dark web is on the deep web, but not everything on the deep web is on the dark web.
- Dumpster diving – A form of HUMINT in which cast-off articles and information are scavenged in an attempt to obtain advantageous data.
- DNS
- Distributed Denial of Service Attack (DDOS)
- Doxing
- Deep web
- Exploit – An exploit is a way or process to take advantage of a bug or vulnerability in a computer or application.
- Evil maid attack
- encryption
- Firewall – These Hacking Terminologies is used when a system filter designed to keep unwanted intruders outside a computer system or network while allowing safe communication between systems and users on the inside of the firewall.
- Footprinting
- Grey hat – As a gray hat hacker, you break the law by hacking systems without permission, but not out of malice. Maybe you’re motivated by the potential for a reward or maybe you have a political goal.
- Hacker – This Hacking Terminology has become wrongly synonymous with someone who breaks into systems or hacks things illegally. Originally, hackers were simply tinkerers or people who enjoyed exploring the details of programmable systems and how to stretch their capabilities Hackers known as white hat hackers.
- HTTPS/SSL/TLS – Stands for Hypertext Transfer Protocol, with the “S” for “Secure.” The Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is the basic framework that controls how data is transferred across the web, while HTTPS adds a layer of encryption that protects your connection to the most important sites. HTTPS uses the protocols SSL and TLS to not only protect your connection but also to prove the identity of the site, so that when you type https://gmail.com you can be confident you’re really connecting to Google and not an imposter site.
- Hash – A hash is a number generated by an algorithm from a string of characters in a message or other string. In a communications system using hashes, the sender of a message or file can generate a hash, encrypt the hash, and send it with the message.
- Hacktivist
- hijacking
- IP (IP address)
- IRC – Internet relay chat is a protocol used by both groups and for one-on-one conversations. Often utilized by hackers to communicate or share files. Because they are usually unencrypted, hackers sometimes use packet sniffers to steal personal information from them.
- Junk Packets – These Hacking Terminologies are used If a hacker wants to take a large website offline quickly, they might send it an enormous amount of junk packets. They are simple internet connection requests, like those sent by everyday users, except sent rapidly in great numbers at once, which will eventually crash the target like trying to fit thousands of people into a revolving door.
- keylogger
- Logic bomb – This Hacking Terminology is used if A virus secreted into a system that triggers a malicious action when certain conditions are met. The most common version is the time bomb.
- malware
- Phishing
- Payload – payload is the part of transmitted data that is the actual intended message.
- Penetration testing
- Ping
- Rootkit
- RAT
- Rooting
- Ransomware
- Remote access – Remote control is the process of getting a target computer to recognize your keystrokes as its own, like changing a TV with remote control. Gaining remote access allows you to run the target machine completely by using your own, allowing for the transfer of files between the target and the host.
- Spam – A Spam is simply an unsolicited email, also known as junk email, sent to a large number of recipients without their consent.
- Spoofing – These Hacking Terminologies has used when a technique used to gain unauthorized access to computers, whereby the intruder sends messages to a computer with an IP address indicating that the message is coming from a trusted host.
- Spyware
- Script kiddies- If you’re a seasoned hacker, you look down on anyone who can’t create hacking code from scratch and needs to borrow other people’s scripts and tools. You call them script kiddies.
- Sidejacking
- SS7
- Threat- A threat is a possible danger that can exploit an existing bug or vulnerability to compromise the security of a computer or network system.
- Trojan
- Virus
- Vulnerability- Is there a crack in your system? A weak spot, an error, some unusual code that a hacker can use to get in? That’s your vulnerability. And if you’re not careful it could give someone access to your whole network.
- VPN
- VOIP
- White hat – A white-hat hacker is someone who hacks with the goal of fixing and protecting systems. As opposed to black hat hackers (see above), instead of taking advantage of their hacks or the bugs they find to make money illegally, they alert the companies and even help them fix the problem.
- Worm
- Whaling – Phishing that targets the senior echelons of management of an organization by a hacker in pursuit of financial gain or greater exposure for a political cause. Whaling could be used to collect sensitive or deeply embarrassing information about an individual e.g. salary, bonuses, private address, email, and telephone numbers.
- Zombie Computer
- Zero-Day threat – A zero-day or “0day” is a bug that’s unknown to the software vendor, or at least it’s not patched yet. Zero-days are the most prized bugs and exploits for hackers because a fix has yet to be deployed for them, so they’re almost guaranteed to work.
