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Ethical Hacking

What is Ethical Hacking?

Ethical Hacking is the act of locating weaknesses and vulnerabilities of computer and information systems by duplicating the intent and actions of malicious hackers. The key difference between this and illegal hacking is gaining the owners permission before beginning. Ethical Hacking can also be called known as penetration testing, intrusion testing, red teaming, or tiger teams.

Who are Ethical Hackers?

An Ethical Hacker or white hat is a security professional professional who applies their hacking skills for defensive purposes on behalf of the owners of information systems.

Ethical hackers know how to find and exploit vulnerabilities and weaknesses in systems just like a malicious hacker or black hat. In fact, they both use the same skills; however, an ethical hacker uses those skills in a legitimate, lawful manner to try to find vulnerabilities and fix them before the bad guys can get there and try to break in. The primary difference between ethical hackers and real hackers is the legality. Nowadays, certiﬁed ethical hackers are among the most sought after information security employees in large organizations.

Ethical Hackers use many techniques and tools to locate vulnerabilities in systems including but not limited to penetration testing, social engineering, scanning, sniffing, cracking passwords, and locating weaknesses in security systems.

Popular Ethical Hacking tools include: Nmap, Metasploit, Kalu Linux, Burp Suite, Cain & Able, Aircrack, Nessus, and many more.

The role of an ethical hacker is important since the bad guys will always be there, trying to find cracks, backdoors, and other secret ways to access data they shouldn’t. In fact, there’s even a professional certification for ethical hackers: the Certified Ethical Hacker(CEH).

*make sure you have documented permission from the right people before breaking into something. Not breaking the law is paramount to being an ethical hacker.