The facts about Ethical Hacking that you should know

 

Have you watched Hollywood sci fi movies like The Matrix, Mr. Robot, Hackerville, CSI cyber etc and bollywood movies like Happy new year, Genius etc  in which people are doing mysterious things with their computers and getting information from others.

 The word ‘hacking’ fascinates almost all people but it requires a lot of knowledge and deep understanding to actually become one. In this blog, we will provide a clear perception of hacking and why it’s important to be an ethical hacker.

Hacking is referred to as unauthorized access to another’s system and getting required information from them. Hacking can only be done if there are some flaws in the system or by infusing virus in it to generate new flaws.

Hacking is the process of identifying and exploiting weakness in a system or a network to gain unauthorized access to data and system resources. It can also be defined as an unauthorized intrusion into the information systems/networks by an attacker by compromising the security.

Example of Hacking: Exploiting the weakness of default password to gain access to the data stored inside the system.

Welcoming word hacker

The word ‘hacker’ was first used in the 1960s at Massachusetts Institute of Technology for skilled-expert who re-develops the mainframe system for its better working. But now the scenario has changed, the word hacker is used for skilled programmers who can inject bugs on other’s devices and gain unauthorised access.

Why be ethical?

As time passed, people got familiar with hacking skills and started using hacking for personal benefit. People started hacking other’s systems, commercial websites etc and demanding money. The formation of this illegal environment in hacking resulted in a negative impression for hackers. 

Thus, they introduced a new environment for hacking and named it as ‘Ethical hacking’.

Ethical hackers are those who are solution providers not problem generators. They are often hired by big companies to solve problems generated in the system by non-ethical hackers to prevent leak of any secret and important data.

Ethical hackers are also known as ‘white hat hackers’.

Non-ethical hackers are known as ‘black hat hackers’.

There is also a third form of hacker known as ‘grey hat hacker’. They get unauthorised access to other devices and inform owners about vulnerabilities in them. Grey hat hacker don’t hack for personal benefit.

White Hat vs Black Hat Hacker

White hat :

1. Motive: they have a very legal motive to protect others from malwares and helping others to get rid of problems.
2. Work: they cure the generated problem in a very efficient way.
3. Technique: they are like police who trace the vulnerabilities by going through the same process like black hat hackers. If they find any flaw in the system, they fix that quickly.
4. Ownership: they are hired by big companies to protect their system and solve security issues.
5. Legality: hacking done by them is legally accepted by the government.

Black hat hackers:

1. Motive: they have the main motive of disturbing others, injecting viruses and earning money for personal gain.
2. Work: they are generally problem creators.
3. Technique: they try to find weak points on the system, hack them immediately and demand for money.
4. Ownership: they can be a single working person or a group of friends but they are never hired by any reputed organisation.
5. Legality: they are totally illegal and their work is considered as crime. Thus they are criminals.

Responsibilities of an Ethical Hacker

1. They follow an ethical guideline and oath to work only for helping others.
2. They take permission from higher authorities before hacking other’s systems.
3. If they know any flaws or secret data , they hide it and never convey this in public.
4. If they find any flaw in the system, they first inform the organisation and try to fix this.
5. They stop black hat hackers from entering the system.
6. They make people aware of cyber attacks.
7. They work constantly for tracing future threats and ways to fix them.

Skills Required to Become an Ethical Hacker:

1. They must have core knowledge of networking and programming codes.
2. They must be the master of database systems like SQL as the attacks are mostly done on databases.
3. They must have scripting skills which will help them in coding and decoding.
4. They should be familiar with multiple operating systems like windows, linux, unix etc.
5. They must have deep Knowledge of search engines and servers.

Benefits of learning Ethical Hacking:

1. This will help you to study the mindsets and techniques of black hat hackers which will help you to find vulnerabilities.
2. The knowledge of ethical hacking can be applied in many technical industries and multitude of sectors.
3. You will be constantly working to defend the corporate sector from threats, working for betterment of society and reducing crimes.
4. The knowledge of ethical hacking helps the network defender to identify future risk and diminishing them before the actual threat comes.
5. Learning ethical hacking will help you to get a safe, secure and luxurious job.