What is Ethical Hacking ?

Ethical Hacking is the practice of breaking into systems with the permission of the owner. Guys I think you actually want to know what is the purpose of ethical hacking.

 whenever a company develops a software, it is definitely tested for bugs. But it also needs to be tested for security. Like a bank website. What do you think will happen if the bank websites are insecure, if your net banking password database can me manipulated by simple SQL injections? If the data can be seen directly? If your password can be cracked by attacks as simple as a brute force? Simple, some illegal hacker will get access to your account and steal all your money.

This is exactly where ethical hackers come into account. They test the system for vulnerability to attacks before it is made available for public. The website is tested before it is actually loaded on the host. They crack it, and then help make it more secure. The more number of loopholes these ethical hackers can close, the harder it will be for the illegal guy to hack into your account.

Hacking has various meanings and a hacker is not always necessarily a bad person. There are three types of hackers- white hats, gray hats and black hats. It also happens to be a top career option for wannabe engineers and software professionals as ethical hackers are sought after a lot these days. Let’s find out more…

As mentioned in our earlier article here, white hat hackers are security researchers or ethical hackers who break security for non-malicious reasons, either to test their own security system, perform penetration tests or vulnerability assessments for a client or while working for a security company which makes security software. They normally notify the vendor once they discover a vulnerability in software so that the flaw can be fixed. For identifying any flaws in software, companies that have bug bounty programs these days pay white hats anywhere between $500 to more than $100,000 by selling that information. White hats are also considered as ethical hackers.

A gray hat hacker lies between a black hat and a white hat hacker. A gray hat hacker can be individual hackers or researchers who surf the Internet and hack into a computer system for the sole purpose of notifying the administrator that their system has a security defect, for example. They may then offer to correct the defect for a fee. Grey hats normally sell or disclose their zero-day vulnerabilities not to criminals, but to governments—law enforcement agencies, intelligence agencies or militarizes presuming that they use the vulnerabilities responsibly for the public good. The government’s use those security holes to hack into the systems of adversaries or criminal suspects.

Considered as criminals, a “black hat” hacker is a hacker who “violates computer security for little reason beyond maliciousness or for personal gain”. Black hat hackers use their expertise to find or develop software holes and break into secure networks to destroy, modify, or steal data; or to make the network unusable for those who are authorized to use the network. They also sell information about the security holes, zero day vulnerabilities and exploits to other criminals for them to use. Obviously, black hats are considered the bad guys, as they are the epitome of all that the public fears in a computer criminal.
Businesses need ethical hackers now more than ever

Now since you know about the different types of hackers, let’s move on to know why ethical hackers are sought after by various businesses. Almost every company including the emerging startups invest lots and lots of money in securing their systems and platforms to prevent data breaches, DDOS attacks or intrusions. Since the number of cyber criminals in the world is increasing minute by minute, there is now more investment in skills, training and technology in the field of ethical hacking. By around 2021, the global spending will most probably cross $1 trillion. With cyber criminals trying so hard to breach, businesses now look to ethical hacking professionals who can prevent devastating security intrusions, DDOS attacks and cyber security breaches and protect their networks, Apps and back end systems.

Ethical hackers conduct controlled hack attacks on organizations called penetration tests aka pen tests to find vulnerabilities and fix them. But unlike malicious ‘black hat’ hackers who exploit these for illegal practices, ethical hackers and security experts provide the company with details needed to fix flaws, before black hats lay their dirty hands. Cyber criminals and ethical hackers think alike and hence businesses will have a deeper insight.

Without pen tests, security holes aka bugs and zero-days will remain unseen and existent thus, leaving an organization or business in a position that a black hat hacker or cyber criminal could potentially exploit. According to the 2016 Internet Security Threat Report prepared by Symantec Corporation, ethical hacking knowledge is sought after by global corporations and SMEs as well. The report also shows that 43% attacks were on SMEs.
Bright career prospects in ethical hacking

Various companies have also started introducing Bug Bounty program. For example, Google has paid out $3 million to hackers doing ethical hacking in just 2016 itself. Totally, $9 million has been paid out since 2010 when Google started the program. Facebook has paid out close to $6 million and Microsoft close to $2 million. Google and Microsoft recently also raised their payouts.

When hiring an ethical hacker look out for industry-standard certifications like EC Council’s Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH)

Ethical hacking and ethical hacker are terms used to describe hacking performed by a company or individual to help identify potential threats on a computer or network. An ethical hacker attempts to bypass system security and search for any weak points that could be exploited by malicious hackers. This information is then used by the organization to improve the system security, in an effort to minimize or eliminate any potential attacks.

What constitutes ethical hacking?

For hacking to be deemed ethical, the hacker must obey the following rules:

Expressed (often written) permission to probe the network and attempt to identify potential security risks.

You respect the individual's or company's privacy.

You close out your work, not leaving anything open for you or someone else to exploit at a later time.

You let the software developer or hardware manufacturer know of any security vulnerabilities you locate in their software or hardware, if not already known by the company.

The term "ethical hacker" has received criticism at times from people who say that there is no such thing as an "ethical" hacker. Hacking is hacking, no matter how you look at it and those who do the hacking are commonly referred to as computer criminals or cyber criminals. However, the work that ethical hackers do for organizations has helped improve system security and can be said to be quite effective and successful. Individuals interested in becoming an ethical hacker can work towards a certification to become a Certified Ethical Hacker, or CEH. This certification is provided by the International Council of E-Commerce Consultants (EC-Council). The exam itself costs about $500 to take and consists of 125 multiple-choice questions in version 8 of the test (version 7 consisted of 150 multiple-choice questions).

Imagine that you are an organization that should have impeccable security, that needs to never get a big security problem that tarnishes its image, like a bank or a hospital or any organization that handles sensitive data that can cause a lot of damage if leaked.

In this situation if you have networks, servers, databases, applications (web and internal), you might be open to a security attack without knowing, and you can't depend on your own developers/administrators to discover oversights because by definition they are oversights and they will keep getting ignored. Developers and administrators are the worst people to criticize their own

Imagine that you are an organization that should have impeccable security, that needs to never get a big security problem that tarnishes its image, like a bank or a hospital or any organization that handles sensitive data that can cause a lot of damage if leaked.

In this situation if you have networks, servers, databases, applications (web and internal), you might be open to a security attack without knowing, and you can't depend on your own developers/administrators to discover oversights because by definition they are oversights and they will keep getting ignored. Developers and administrators are the worst people to criticize their own work.

Ethical hacking is the solution to this problem, you hire an independent third party to test attacking your external and internal network and provide feedback about existing problems in a discreet and proficient way.