Stages in System Hacking

System Hacking is a way through which an attacker or an unauthorized person gains access to your system and starts performing unusual activities on your system (like sending fake emails, and messages). Because once your system gets hacked then everything will be in the hands of the attacker. This is because the attacker is smarter than us and they know when to do what.

System Hacking involves some stages each with a unique objective. Please keep in mind that here I am not talking about hacking (as a whole). This is because the phases in the hacking process are different compared to the system hacking. In system hacking the attacker tries to gain access to the system and nothing else whereas in hacking everything can come into risk and the processes would be different. It means that System hacking is just a small part of the Hacking as a whole which can be performed to any target device.

Note: In 2025, with cybercrime projected to cost $13.8 trillion globally (Statista)

Stages in System Hacking

System hacking follows a structured process where attackers methodically compromise a system through four distinct stages. Each stage has a specific objective, from initial entry to covering tracks.

Below mentioned are the stages in the system hacking:

• Gaining Access
• Escalating Privileges
• Maintaining Access
• Clearing Logs

1. Gaining Access

The first stage in system hacking is gaining access to your system. In this phase, the attacker tries to enter into the target's system. This could be performed through cracking the passwords or exploiting the vulnerabilities.

For example: The access could be gained through attacks like brute- force tools like Hydra or John the Ripper to guess passwords, Phishing, or exploiting the vulnerabilities using tools like exploitdb or Metasploit.

2. Escalating Privileges

In this phase, the attacker tries to manipulate the privileges to Gain higher permissions (e.g., admin or root) of their target so that they can get more information about the target's role to use them in their way.

For example: In this phase, the attacker exploits the flaws in the target device (e.g., Dirty Pipe, CVE-2022-0847 in Linux) and also use misconfigured services e.g., SUID binaries in Linux: find / -perm -4000 and also Inject malicious code via DLL hijacking or kernel exploits.

3. Maintaining Access

The next phase is to maintain access to the system so that the attacker can perform more malicious activities on the target system. In this phase the attacker tries to maintain a long term access with the tagets device.

For example: To gain the long term access the attacker tries to install the backdoors (e.g., Netcat, Meterpreter persistent sessions) on the target's device than create rogue user accounts (e.g., useradd -m hiddenuser in Linux) and deploy rootkits to hide malicious processes.

4. Clearing Logs

The very last phase of system hacking is clearing of logs. This step of removing traces is crucial for the attacker because the information about the attacker can caught by the ethical hacker. And if caught then they would be punished hard for what they did to the target's device.

For Example: In this phase the attacker can use the Log Clearing tools like, ClearLogs, Meterpreter etc or they can manipulate timestamps with touch -t.

People might relate and confuse between the system hacking and system hijacking. Let's understand it in short.

What is System Hijacking?

System hijacking is a concept in which the attacker takes control over the whole system (session, browser, domain name). And the types that are involved in hijacking are completely different from the system hacking.We have different types of hijacking techniques: Session Hijacking, Browser Hijacking,and the DNS Hijacking.

Types of System Hijacking

• Session Hijacking: Steals session cookies to impersonate users (e.g., via XSS or MITM attacks).
• Browser Hijacking: Alters browser settings (e.g., homepage, extensions) via malware.
• DNS Hijacking: Redirects domain queries to malicious servers (e.g., changing DNS resolver to 8.8.8.8).

Common System Hacking Techniques

System hacking relies on a variety of techniques to exploit vulnerabilities and gain unauthorized access to systems. These methods, used by both malicious hackers and ethical hackers during penetration tests, target human behavior, software flaws, or network weaknesses

• Phising: Phising is one of the most widely used system hacking technique. It can generally happen through fake websites or emails that are trying to be legitimate(authentic) but in actual they are not. So, it is very important to verify the website or the email attachments before opening them.
• Malware: The other common technique of system hacking is through malware. Malware generally known as malicious software that got installed on the victim's machine when the victim go to any fake or infected website or emails.It is very harmful technique as through this the attacker can take control over our whole system.
• Denial of Service (DoS) and Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS): This method is generally used to take control over the whole system or network. These are the type of attacks through which the attacker sends the unwanted traffic to the network traffic or system so that the services can make unavailable for it's legitimate users.

System Hacking Countermeasures and Protection

Countermeasures are essential to defend against system hacking, fortifying systems and networks against unauthorized access, malware, and cyberattacks

• Regular Software Updates: Regular software updates needs to apply must. Because any loophole in the outdated system can make your device vulnerable to attacker's target. That's why the updation of your system and it's applications is mandatory to save your device from any unethical behavior.

• Intrusion Detection System (IDS): IDS generally stands for Intrusion Detection System which is usually used to detect any unusual network traffic and alerting the respective organization about that unusual network traffic. Kindly apply IDS on your system in order to detect or get the alert regarding any unusual happening to your network.

• Intrusion Prevention System (IPS): IPS generally stands for Intrusion Prevention System is a technique using which we can prevent and detect from any unwanted network traffic.IPS alerts and provide the prevention measures by blocking any suspicious network traffic. This could better perform and provide the best results in order to provide safety.

• Monitoring and Logging: Monitoring should be done on regular basis inorder to get a view on any loophole present in your system or in your network through which you are connected . Logging relates to the vision of actively monitoring the system who is logging into the internal services and what they are doing. Proper checks should be maintained to prevent the organization from any internal attacks.

• Firewalls: Firewall act as an additional security layer and every system should have firewall inorder to monitor the inbound and the outbound network traffic. There are two types of firewalls namely Software and Hardware. It completely depend upon you which type of firewall do you want to use.

• Strong Passwords: Strong password policy needs to be implemented. It means that the (length count, Character, Digits, and Symbols) should be used. And make the password unique for every service you use.This is because if the passwords are strong and unique then it will become difficult for the attacker to guess the password and hence you will be safe.

Conclusion

Nowdays technology is at it's peak. Half of the population is using it.And we should not forget that if the technology is increasing then the risk related to this technology is also increasing.It is very important to save your device from any malicious attempts. The major point to keep in mind that you can do is to keep your device updated and use any antivirus.You can also use IDS and IPS but majorly regular updation and the use of any software preventing or detecting any harmful network network is must.|Prevent your device and network.