60 Hacking Commands You NEED to Know

The core takeaway is that practical “hacking commands” aren’t just about exploitation—they’re a toolkit for reconnaissance, traffic shaping, evasion, packet capture, and remote access. The walkthrough strings together dozens of command-line utilities (mostly Linux-focused) that help identify live hosts, test firewall behavior, map networks, enumerate web and WordPress surfaces, and then pivot into remote shells and tunneling when direct access is blocked.

It starts with basic connectivity testing using ping, then quickly turns ping into a firewall-testing instrument. Packet size changes (e.g., using a dash S size flag) and high-volume flooding (combining large packets with a flood switch) are used to stress targets and observe how defenses react. To make the effects visible in real time, the session introduces IF top for monitoring bandwidth during floods, and then escalates to Hping3 for more granular control: flooding specific ports, adding verbose output, and performing trace-style probing. A key pivot is using trace and port-specific behavior—running trace route against web ports (like 80) so the probing resembles legitimate traffic patterns.

When filtering blocks normal traffic, the transcript highlights tunneling as a workaround. P-tunnel is used to carry TCP over ICMP echo traffic, effectively wrapping SSH inside ICMP packets. TCP dump then becomes the live “truth serum,” capturing ICMP packets so the ICMP-based tunnel can be confirmed while an SSH session is established. The message is clear: if a firewall blocks a protocol, tunneling can repackage it into something the firewall allows.

From there, reconnaissance tools take center stage. Nmap is used for host discovery, service enumeration, OS detection, and vulnerability scanning via scripts (including malware-related checks). The walkthrough also emphasizes stealth tactics: avoiding ping probes, fragmenting packets, spoofing source ports to look like DNS, and using decoys to obscure the scanner’s origin. For scale, Masscan is introduced as a faster alternative for large network sweeps, with rate controls and randomized host ordering.

The command set then broadens beyond “classic hacking” into web and workflow utilities. Whois and WhatWeb provide domain and technology intelligence (including identifying Shopify). Curl is positioned as an API recon workhorse, showing how to inspect headers, follow redirects, and send custom authentication headers.

For web exploitation surface mapping, the transcript uses Nikto for vulnerability scanning, GoBuster for directory and file enumeration, and DNS-focused enumeration via SecLists and wordlists (including a Jason Haddock DNS list). It also covers WPScan for WordPress-specific enumeration and vulnerability checks, noting that an API token is required for richer results.

Finally, the transcript moves into persistence and remote control. It demonstrates a Bash setuid-based backdoor concept (via chmod with the setuid bit on /bin/bash) to regain root access later—framed as a “favorite” command but clearly a high-risk technique. It also returns to packet analysis with TShark (Thar) for filtering HTTP requests, extracting endpoints, and following TCP streams. Operationally, Tmux helps manage multiple sessions. Remote access is handled with SSH, including running single commands remotely and creating a SOCKS proxy to route browser traffic through another region.

The closing sections cover Netcat for reverse shells and simple chat-style connectivity, reinforcing the theme: command-line mastery spans discovery, evasion, observation, and control—often all in the same workflow.