Scanning and enumeration are the first phases of hacking and involve the hacker locating target systems or networks. Enumeration is the follow-on step once scanning is complete and is used to identify computer names, usernames, and shares.

• E-mail

• IRC

• ICQ

• News

• AIM

• FTP

A threat is an environment or situation that could lead to a potential breach of security.

Ethical hackers look for and prioritize threats when performing a security analysis.
In computer security, an exploit is a piece of software that takes advantage of a bug, glitch,
or vulnerability, leading to unauthorized access, privilege escalation, or denial of service on a
computer system.

There are two methods of classifying exploits:
A remote exploit works over a network and exploits security vulnerabilities without any
prior access to the vulnerable system.
A local exploit requires prior access to the vulnerable system to increase privileges.

An exploit is a defined way to breach the security of an IT system through a vulnerability.

A vulnerability is an existence of a software flaw, logic design, or implementation error that can
lead to an unexpected and undesirable event executing bad or damaging instructions to the system.

A target of evaluation is a system, program, or network that is the subject of a security
analysis or attack.

An attack occurs when a system is compromised based on a vulnerability. Many attacks are
perpetuated via an exploit. Ethical hackers use tools to find systems that may be vulnerable to
an exploit because of the operating system, network configuration, or applications installed
on the systems, and prevent an attack.

Types of Hacking Technologies

Most hacking tools exploit weaknesses in one of the following four areas:
Operating systems
Many systems administrators install operating systems with the default
settings, resulting in potential vulnerabilities that remain unpatched.
Applications
Applications usually aren’t tested for vulnerabilities when developers are writing
the code, which can leave many programming flaws that a hacker can exploit.
Shrink-wrap code
Many off-the-shelf programs come with extra features the common user
isn’t aware of, which can be used to exploit the system. One example is macros in Microsoft
Word, which can allow a hacker to execute programs from within the application.
Misconfigurations
Systems can also be misconfigured or left at the lowest common security
settings to increase ease of use for the user, which may result in vulnerability and an attack.

Attacks can be categorized as either
passive
or
active
Passive and active attacks are used on both network security infrastructures and on hosts. Active attacks actually alter the system or network they’re attacking, whereas passive attacks attempt to gain information
from the system.
Active attacks affect the availability, integrity, and authenticity of data; passive attacks are breaches of confidentiality.

In addition to the active and passive categories, attacks are categorized as either
inside
or
outside attacks. 

An attack originating from within the security perimeter of an organization is
an inside attack and usually is caused by an “insider” who gains access to more resources than
expected.
An outside attack originates from a source outside the security perimeter, such as the
Internet or a remote access connection.

Types of Hacker Classes

Hackers can be divided into three groups: white hats, black hats, and grey hats. Ethical hackers
usually fall into the white-hat category, but sometimes they’re former grey hats who have become
security professionals and who use their skills in an ethical manner.

White hats
White Hats are the good guys, the ethical hackers who use their hacking skills for
defensive purposes. White-hat hackers are usually security professionals with knowledge of
hacking and the hacker toolset and who use this knowledge to locate weaknesses and implement
countermeasures.

Black hats
Black hats are the bad guys: the malicious hackers or crackers who use their skills
for illegal or malicious purposes. They break into or otherwise violate the system integrity of
remote machines, with malicious intent. Having gained unauthorized access, black-hat hackers
destroy vital data, deny legitimate users service, and basically cause problems for their targets.
Black-hat hackers and crackers can easily be differentiated from white-hat hackers because their
actions are malicious.

Grey hats
Grey hats are hackers who may work offensively or defensively, depending on the situation.
This is the dividing line between hacker and cracker. Both are powerful forces on the Internet,
and both will remain permanently. And some individuals qualify for both categories. The
existence of such individuals further clouds the division between these two groups of people.

In fact tracing an IP address is very simple and easy than we think. There exists many websites through which you can trace any IP address back to it’s source. One of my favorite site is ip2location.com. Just go to http://www.ip2location.com/demo.aspx and enter the IP address that you want to trace in the dialog box and click on “Find Location”‘. With just a click of a button you can find the following information for any given IP address.
1. Country in which the IP is located
2. Region
3. City
4. Latitude/Longitude
5. Zip Code
6. Time Zone
7. Name of the ISP
8. Internet Speed
9. Weather Station
10. Area Code and
11. Domain name associated with the IP address.
A sample snapshot of the results from ip2location.com is given below

         The most frequent question asked by many people especially in a chat room is How to Hack an Email Account? So you as the reader are most likely reading this because you want to hack into some one’s email account. Most of the sites on the internet teach you some nonsense and outdated tricks to hack email. But here are some of the real and working ways that can be used to hack an email account.

THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW BEFORE PROCEEDING

Before you learn the real ways to hack email, the following are the things you should be aware of.

1. There is no ready made software that can hack emails just with a click of a button. Please don’t waste your money on such scam softwares.
2. Never trust any email hacking services that claims to hack emails just for $100 or $200. Often people get fooled by these services and eventually loose their money with no gain.
3. With my experience of over 6 years in the field of Hacking and Security, I can tell you that there exists only 2 foolproof methods to hack an email. All the other methods are simply scam or don’t work. The following are the only 2 foolproof methods that work.

1. EASIEST WAY TO HACK AN EMAIL ACCOUNT

2. OTHER WAYS TO HACK AN EMAIL ACCOUNT