Here are some of the latest ethical hacking interview questions along with potential answers:

What is ethical hacking?

Ethical hacking refers to the practice of bypassing system security, not for malicious purposes or personal gain, but to identify potential vulnerabilities so they can be rectified. The ethical hacker has authorization to probe the network and attempt to find security gaps.

Explain the difference between Black Hat, White Hat, and Grey Hat hackers?

A Black Hat hacker is a person who hacks with malicious intent, typically without permission. A White Hat hacker, also known as an ethical hacker, attempts to find system vulnerabilities but does so in a lawful manner, often employed by the system owner. A Grey Hat hacker falls in between, as they might hack without malicious intent but also without explicit permission.

What are some common types of cyberattacks?

Some common types include phishing, ransomware attacks, denial-of-service attacks, man-in-the-middle attacks, SQL injection, cross-site scripting, and malware attacks, among others.

What is a VPN and why is it important for ethical hacking?

A VPN, or Virtual Private Network, creates a secure connection to another network over the Internet. It can be used to access region-restricted websites, shield browsing activity from prying eyes on public Wi-Fi, and more. For ethical hackers, VPNs provide a secure way to test systems without revealing their own IP addresses or other identifying information.

What is social engineering? Can you provide an example?

Social engineering is the art of manipulating people so they give up confidential information. Phishing, where a hacker may send an email posing as a reputable entity to trick the recipient into revealing sensitive data, is an example of social engineering.

What is the CIA triad?

The CIA (Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability) triad is a model designed to guide policies for information security within an organization.

Can you explain what SQL injection is?

SQL injection is a code injection technique used to attack data-driven applications. The attacker uses malicious SQL code inserted into a query, which can lead to unauthorized access, data manipulation, or data loss.

What tools do you often use for ethical hacking?

This will depend on the ethical hacker’s preference and requirements of the task. Some popular tools are Wireshark, Metasploit, Burp Suite, Nessus, and Nmap.

How would you conduct a penetration test on a system?

Penetration testing typically involves several stages: planning and reconnaissance, scanning, gaining access, maintaining access (to test how long the system can be compromised), and then analysis/reporting.

What is a zero-day exploit?

A zero-day exploit refers to a software security flaw that is unknown to the party or parties responsible for patching or otherwise fixing the flaw. The term ‘zero-day’ refers to the fact that the developers have ‘zero days’ to fix the problem that has just been exposed — and potentially already exploited.

What is footprinting in ethical hacking?

Footprinting is the process of collecting as much information as possible about a target network, for identifying various ways to intrude into an organization’s network system. This is usually the first step in ethical hacking.

Explain what a honeypot is?

A honeypot is a computer security mechanism set up to act as a decoy to lure cyber attackers, and to detect, deflect, or study hacking attempts in order to improve security.

Can you describe the differences between IDS and IPS?

Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS) are designed to detect suspicious activities, and they send alerts when such activities are identified. Intrusion Prevention Systems (IPS), on the other hand, not only detect suspicious activities but also take action to prevent or stop the activities.

What is a botnet?

A botnet is a network of computers that have been compromised and controlled by a malicious actor (known as a botmaster or bot herder). These are often used to send spam emails, steal data, or launch distributed denial-of-service attacks.

What is a rainbow table attack?

A rainbow table attack is a type of hacking wherein a hacker uses a rainbow hash table to crack the passwords stored in a database system. Rainbow tables are precomputed tables for reversing cryptographic hash functions.

Can you explain cross-site request forgery?

Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) is an attack that tricks the victim into submitting a malicious request. It uses the identity and privileges of the victim to perform an undesired function on their behalf, like changing their email address or password or making a purchase.

What are logic bombs in the context of cybersecurity?

A logic bomb is a piece of code intentionally inserted into software to execute a malicious function when certain conditions are met, such as displaying a message on a specific date or deleting particular types of files.

What is a dictionary attack?

A dictionary attack is a method of breaking into a password-protected computer or server by systematically entering every word in a dictionary as a password.

What does fuzzing mean in the context of ethical hacking?

Fuzzing is a technique used by ethical hackers to discover coding errors and security loopholes in software, operating systems, or networks by inputting massive amounts of random data, called fuzz, to the system in an attempt to make it crash.

Can you explain risk, vulnerability, and threat in the context of information security?

In information security, risk is the potential for loss or damage when a threat exploits a vulnerability. Vulnerability refers to weaknesses in a system that can be exploited by malicious actors. A threat is anything that can exploit a vulnerability to breach security and cause harm to the system.

What is session hijacking?

Session hijacking is an attack where a user session is taken over by an attacker. It typically involves stealing or predicting a session ID to gain control.

What is steganography?

Steganography is the practice of concealing a file, message, image, or video within another file, message, image, or video. It’s different from encryption as the goal is to hide that communication is happening at all, rather than just obscuring the content.

What is pharming and how does it work?

Pharming is a cyber attack intended to redirect a website’s traffic to a fake site. Typically, the attacker will exploit a vulnerability in the DNS server software to achieve this.

What is an exploit in the context of cybersecurity?

In the context of cybersecurity, an exploit is a piece of software, a chunk of data, or a sequence of commands that take advantage of a bug, glitch, or vulnerability in order to cause unintended behavior to occur.

What is the principle of “least privilege”?

The principle of least privilege (PoLP) is a computer security concept in which a user is given the minimum levels of access necessary to complete his/her job functions. The goal of PoLP is to prevent users from accessing data or commands that they do not need for their job, thus minimizing the damage that could be done if the account is compromised.