Phases of hacking

Information Gathering and Reconnaissance

The information gathering and reconnaissance phase is the beginning of hacking. First the attacker gathers all the information passively and actively available about target. It includes anything and everything he could get hands on like information from googling, dumpster diving, whois lookup, reverse IP lookup etc.

Scanning and enumeration

The second phase is scanning and enumeration. From the information taken from phase one, the attacker take necessary steps to actively scan the subnets, web server or other IP address pools. After scanning, attacker list out all those open ports and tries to identify (enumerate) application /services running on each and every port

Gaining access

The third phase is gaining access. The attacker find outs a way (exploit) to break in to the system / network from the information he got from previous stage. The attacker may use one or more exploit to trigger an existing vulnerability in the system and gain access.

Maintaining access

In the fourth phase maintaining access, the attacker tries to get higher privileges and create backdoor in the machine. Since the attacker has created backdoor in the target, next time when he wants to access his target he could have it easily.

Clearing tracks 

The last phase is the clearing tracks, which includes clearing logs and all sort of such evidences to prevent a trace back. In some cases hacker switch their entire traffic to anonymity network / browser before performing a formal attack. In such cases clearing tracks are considered in phase one