What is a Website?

A website is a set of interlinked web pages which is nothing but an application installed on a particular device. Two main applications of a website include -

• Web server -A web server runs a website by executing the web application written in programming languages such as Java, Python, and PHP. Apache is an example of a leading web server.  
• Database -Database contains all the data used by the web application stored in a server. For example - MySQL.

Suppose we want to access Google.com. We type it in the address bar and then it gets translated using the DNS server to its relevant IP address. In simple words, The request to access Google.com goes to the DNS server which translates it to the IP address where it is stored and will execute the page using the HTML.  

This information is important because if we want to execute something on a web page, we need to send it in the language that the web page understands such as PHP or JavaScript.

Attacking a Website

Two approaches are usually followed when attacking a website -

• We can use side-server attacks to hack it by finding the vulnerabilities in the system and then take advantage of them to gain complete control over the target system.
• Client-side attacks allow us to hack the administrator of the websites, Once we get their username and password, it is easy to log in with their credentials using the admin panel. We will gain access to any servers that are used to manage the website. 

Information Gathering

You can gather as much information as you can from the target system using network tools such as Lookup, Netcraft, Robtex, and more. These tools help collect information such as IP addresses, the domain name, type of database used, type of server installed, programming language used, the technology used on the website, and more. We can also obtain information on sub domains and find specific files. 

Apart from the information gathering tools we mentioned above, we can also use