HTTrack Essay

During this week I had the pleasure of using HTTrack. I found that HTTrack is a program that works like an offline browser and allows you to download a World Wide Web site from the internet. The downloaded site can be directed to a local directory, building recursively all directories, getting HTML, images, and other files from the server to your computer. I had HTTrack mirror the site www. certifiedhacker. com and it allowed me to browse the site from link to link, as if I were viewing it online. My local website compared to the actual website was very accurate. The links in the local website function just as well as the links in the actual website. The local websites structure is identical or very near identical to the actual website. As shown in the picture above HTTrack is transferring the data of the acutal site (www. certifiedhacker. com) to the mirrored site in my local directory. This tool can be used to allow an attacker to gather information about a target. When an attacker mirrors a site using HTTrack they will create an exact duplicate of the website which can be used to deceive the users of that website. For example, a hacker can mirror a site and use the mirrored sites login screen or applications to gather information about the website user. The user would enter sensitive data such as passwords, bank account numbers and credit cards, believing that the site is legitimate. All of this information is actually input onto the mirrored site and now the hackers have gathered information about their target.