Much like in any other field, the right tools can make a world of difference in the realm of ethical hacking. That said, for professionals still in the early stages of their career, it’s best to nail down the fundamentals first–such as those covered in the Certified Ethical Hacking (CEH) course–before leaning on automated solutions.
Naturally, you’ll need to master these tools to be as effective as possible at your job. However, when you’re learning how to attack web apps, for instance, they can often spoil your hacking education. With just a few commands and parameters, automated tools can quickly pinpoint vulnerabilities, exploit them, and even offer suggestions on how to best fix them. So, unless you understand the goings on of the attack behind the scenes, you’ll only be hindering your growth as an ethical hacker. Read on as we go over the importance of focusing on manual learning first and foremost before diving deep into the tools of your trade.
How Hacking Tools Can Deprive You of Invaluable Learning Experiences
This phenomenon applies to various aspects of cybersecurity. Popular tools like jwt_tool, SAMLRaider, and SQLmap are undoubtedly powerful and essential for not just real-world use cases but also learning, but they must never be your first choice when you want to learn the ropes. Instead, it’s better to view them as time savers once you’ve gained a solid foundation of the basics. Otherwise, using these tools without even fully grasping the underlying attacks will only lead to missing out on key learning and essential skills that could significantly set back your progression. To summarise, here are the disadvantages of extensive reliance on tools for learning:
1. Tool limitations
Similar to their real-life counterparts, automated hacking tools can also fail. No tool is perfect, and they cannot provide a 100% guarantee that they’ll catch every single vulnerability or be able to successfully exploit them. As a result, you end up getting stuck should your tools fail since you have nothing to fall back on due to your lack of mastery of the manual techniques.
Similarly, the same thing happens if the tool is yet to have support for a specific technology or attack. In essence, manual exploitation is vital to avoid going back to square one, with any issues you run into only becoming minor hurdles at best instead of major roadblocks.
2. Incomplete overall understanding
An overreliance on tools leads to missing out on the learning process. For instance, if you use SQLmap without knowing the mechanics of SQL injections, you’ll lack the skills and knowledge to create attack payloads, parse database errors, or identify all the many types of SQL injections.
3. Insufficient knowledge for more advanced exploitation
Many hacking tools today can only do well-known or basic techniques. If you want to create an exploit that’s more advanced and custom to your needs, you will need a thorough understanding of the fundamentals to bypass the protections your tools cannot overcome.
Getting Good At Hacking Is Not A Race
Becoming a proficient ethical hacker is a journey that arguably has no definitive end in sight given that cybersecurity is continuously evolving in nature. This is why everything in the industry, from the technologies and individual professionals to the certifications that prove their skills, such as CEH online training in Singapore, must always upgrade.
And by spending the time and effort to manually test and exploit a variety of systems, you discover invaluable knowledge and attack patterns that can be applied to other technologies and also develop a deeper passion for learning. The latter advantage is key to succeeding in this field where many things can potentially change overnight. Thus, to fully embrace manual learning, take note of these steps as they’ll be your guide to success.
1. Always get the basics down pat first
Whether it’s SQL injections, XSS, JWT vulnerabilities, CSRF, or something else, make sure to learn all the fundamental principles of whatever vulnerability you want to target.
2. Do manual practice as much as possible
Getting good at manually finding and using exploits inherently demands plenty of practice. As long as you get effective hands-on experience, it doesn’t really matter how you achieve it, whether it’s through PentesterLab and other similar platforms or making your very own lab.
3. Analyse your tools and consider making your own
Once you’re done with the basics, direct your focus to your tools next and uncover their inner workings, from their payloads to their exploitation methods and everything in between. This close examination will undoubtedly provide invaluable insights into hacking automation and other advanced techniques. Once you have enough knowledge, you could also try your hand at making your own scripts to streamline certain aspects of the exploitation process and polish your programming skills at the same time.
Conclusion
When you decide to pursue ethical hacking, it’s best not to rush the process. Instead, take your time and enjoy the learning experience. This approach and mindset allows you to fully grasp the details of various attacks and ultimately makes you a better, more versatile hacker and a professional capable of creating more secure systems. Last but not least, you get to establish a solid foundation that can then be enhanced with automated tools.
Ready to take your ethical hacking career to the next level? Sign up for BridgingMinds’ high-quality IT and cybersecurity courses today, which include the EC-Council Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH) certification, CompTIA Security+, and more. With over 13 years of industry expertise, we remain committed to empowering professionals at every stage of their careers and helping them stay relevant in their respective industries. Don’t miss the chance to enhance your skills—join today!
