Ethical Hacking Interview Questions

The cybersecurity domain is a booming industry that offers major in-demand job opportunities to aspirants. Ethical hacking is one of the most prestigious and prevalent career paths that opens multiple doors to your career dreams.

The demand for ethical hackers is increasing daily because of the increase in the number of cybersecurity attacks. If you wish to become an ethical hacker, you should crack the ethical hacking interview, and here is the complete guide to help you out with structured interview preparation.

Introduction to Ethical Hacking Interviews

Cybersecurity threats increase the demand for skilled and capable ethical hackers. Ethical hackers are also known as white-hat hackers or penetration testers.

Thus, ethical hacking interviews have gained increasing popularity. The ethical hacking interviews focus on both theoretical knowledge and practical aspects. The ethical hacking interviews involve questions from the real world that try to determine the problem-solving skills and analytical techniques used for ethical hacking.

Cracking an ethical hacking interview is essential for both freshers and experienced professionals. Even if you are preparing for your first cybersecurity hacking interview, you need to prepare in an organised and structured manner to crack the interview with ease.

The interviewers may focus on ethical responsibilities, web application security, fundamentals of networking, operating system development, tools, and techniques.

Keep on reading to know more about the ethical hacking interview questions that include scenario-based, tool-based, and technical aspects and HR questions.

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Ethical Hacking Interview Questions for Freshers

The entry-level ethical hacking questions are here to assess the fundamental knowledge in cybersecurity and the quest to learn, as a fresher, the nuances of the cybersecurity domain.

Basic questions to expect while attending an ethical hacking interview as a fresher

1. Who is a hacker?
2. Who is an ethical hacker?
3. What is the difference between hacking and ethical hacking?
4. What is footprinting?
5. What is a rootkit?
6. What are the types of cyber threats?
7. What is social engineering?
8. What is the CIA triad in cyberspace?
9. What is social security?
10. What are the different ways of hacking?
11. What are the types of hackers?
12. Why is ethical hacking referred to as penetration testing?
13. What is penetration testing?
14. What is vulnerability assessment?
15. What is malware?
16. Conceptual questions
17. What is antivirus software?
18. What is phishing?
19. What is digital forensics?
20. What is a bug bounty?
21. What is the use of backdoor control?
22. What is a brute force attack?
23. What is two-factor authentication?
24. What is ethical hacking in cyberspace?
25. What is the role of an ethical hacker in cybersecurity?
26. What is a zero-day vulnerability?
27. What is a firewall?
28. What is encryption?
29. What is decryption?
30. What is the difference between encryption and decryption?
31. What is a keylogger?
32. What is a risk assessment in cybersecurity?

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Ethical Hacking Interview Questions for Experienced

Here are the popular questions that an interviewer can ask during an ethical hacking interview for an experienced candidate

1. How do you perform privilege escalation?
2. What are brute force attacks?
3. How to execute cloaking?
4. What is a logic bomb in cyberspace?
5. Elaborate on ransomware?
6. Elaborate on the critical vulnerabilities you encountered.
7. What is the definition of lateral movement?
8. How to perform a penetration test?
9. What are the challenges and risks of doing penetration tests?
10. Define the importance of ethical hackers in society.
11. What are the criteria to document penetration testing reports?
12. Elaborate on your ethical hacking methodology.
13. What is the importance of vulnerabilities?
14. How to handle false positives?
15. What are black-box, white-box and grey-box testing
16. Define post-exploitation?
17. Elaborate on how to execute a penetration test with high failure rates.
18. How to communicate about risks in the cybersecurity domain to a non-technical person?
19. What are compliance standards, and which one is the best for ethical hacking?
20. What are the pros and cons of a penetration test?
21. How to stay focused and updated on the latest cybersecurity trends?

Technical Ethical Hacking Questions

As freshers, you should have clarity about all the concepts in cybersecurity rather than memorising answers. The interviewers may focus on the enthusiasm, knowledge and logical explanations for most of the questions.

Networking Linux & Windows

Technical ethical questions are very popular among ethical hackers. If you are an ethical hacker preparing for an interview, you need to understand the nature of each question.

Networking Questions 

1. How does DNS work?
2. What are the key elements of TCP and UDP?
3. Define TCP.
4. What is packet sniffing?
5. What is UDP?
6. What is JsisAT?
7. What is ARP poisoning?
8. What is a subnet?
9. What is a proxy server?

Linux questions 

1. What are the basic Linux commands used in ethical hacking?
2. Why is Linux important for ethical hacking?
3. Define Kali Linux.
4. How to find open ports in Linux?
5. What is a hard link?
6. What is the role of file permissions in Linux?
7. How do file permissions help to work smoothly in Linux?
8. Define a cron job?
9. Elaborate on the symbolic link?
10. Define bash scripting.
11. What is root access?

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Windows Question 

1. Elaborate on NTLM?
2. Define registry.
3. Define Active Directory.
4. Explain Kerberos.
5. What is PowerShell?
6. Define Windows privilege escalation.
7. Define group policy?
8. What is Windows authentication?
9. How to secure Windows servers?
10. Elaborate on event viewer logs.

Web Application Security OWASP

Ethical hacking interviews typically focus on web application security.

OWASP TOP 10 questions

1. Define OWASP.
2. Explain IDO. R?
3. Elaborate on security data exposure?
4. Define SQL injection.
5. What is an XXE attack?
6. What is stored XSS?
7. What is the difference between reflected and stored XSS?
8. Elaborate on SSR. F?
9. Elaborate on SQL injection?
10. Define clickjacking.
11. What are APIs?
12. How to secure APIs?
13. What is XSS?
14. Define session hijacking.
15. What is vulnerability in test file uploading?
16. What is the difference between HTTP and HTTPS?
17. Explain cookies.
18. Define CSR. F?
19. Elaborate on broken authentication?
20. Explain how you test SQL injection.
21. What is bypass authentication?
22. What are access controls?

Top 10 Scenario-Based & Practical Questions

Once you are exposed to the real world, how you will respond to the cyber threats and cyber vulnerabilities is crucial. You should have a strong understanding of the practical ethical hacking tools and techniques.

1. How to respond to a data breach?
2. How to test a system with zero credentials?
3. How to respond to a critical vulnerability?
4. What are the critical steps to prevent a vulnerability?
5. How to test a live website?
6. What are the different types of technical risks that arise at the time of hacking?
7. How to test the security of cloud infrastructure?
8. What will we do to fix the vulnerabilities if the client refuses to cooperate?
9. How to fix sensitive data while testing
10. How to tackle legal boundaries at the time of hacking?

Tools-Based Questions (Nmap, Metasploit, Burp Suite, Wireshark)

Here are the basic ethical hacking tool-based questions.

Nmap

1. How is Nmap working?
2. How to detect firewalls using Nmap?
3. What do you mean by stealth scanning?
4. What is Nmap?

Metasploit

1. What are the uses of Metasploit?
2. What is an exploit?
3. Define payload.
4. What are the differences between a bind shell and a reverse shell?

Burp Suite

1. Explain how the burp repeater works.
2. Define Burp Suite.
3. What is Burp Intruder?
4. How to test authentication using Burp?

Wireshark

1. How to analyse network traffic?
2. How to tackle ts?
3. What is the purpose of Wireshark?
4. What is a pcap file?

HR & Behavioural Questions

This round in every interview focuses on the communication skills and professionalism of an interviewee.

1. How do you face challenges while doing ethical hacking?
2. What is your motivation to choose ethical hacking as your profession? How do you face failures?
3. Why should we hire you?
4. What is your purpose for becoming an ethical hacker?
5. As an ethical hacker, how are you handling pressure?
6. How to fulfil the ethical responsibilities
7. What is your take on cybersecurity, and how can you improve the environment?

Tips to Crack Ethical Hacking Interviews

Learn the key tips and tricks to crack the ethical hacking interview questions here

• Build a strong knowledge foundation in both networking and the fundamentals of cybersecurity.
• Regular practice in solving cybersecurity threats
• Learn more about OWASP.
• Familiarise yourself with all the tools and techniques.
• Stay updated with the current trends.
• Familiarise yourself with real-world cybersecurity projects.
• Learn ethical guidelines and practices.
• Highlight your skills and expertise in the resume.

Conclusion

Entri’s AI – Powered cybersecurity course can give you the right direction to become a successful ethical hacker. The ethical hacking interview tests the fundamental knowledge, practical and theoretical knowledge, skills and communication ability.

You have to gain hands-on experience in the real-world cybersecurity industry to become a successful ethical hacker. You can crack your interview if you are learning in a methodical and structured way.

Entri App provides guidance from experts in the cybersecurity domain to get a real hold on the same. You can start your ethical hacking journey with more confidence and motivation.