Ethical Hacking | eBook | AudioBook

The Following is an Excerpt from this Book

There are two types of people who try to hack into IT things, and they are the bad-guy hackers and the good-guy hackers who are also evidently known as ethical hackers. Both the hackers can be equally good at their skills and can use the same methods and tools to breach a system, the only difference will be, the bad-guy hacker will be committing a criminal offense, hence treason for the bad guy-hacker and at the same time, the good-guy hacker will be ethically hacking the systems and testing their vulnerabilities and hence will receive money and trust as a reward. Ethical hacking means hacking or breaking into the system deliberately with full knowledge and consent of the owner of the system to conduct a test on the vulnerabilities of the system and determine what countermeasures are needed to make the system safer from any hacking attack.

There are certain rules and procedures that an ethical hacker needs to follow. Skipping even one procedure or rule can be dangerous for both the ethical hacker and the owner of the system. There is a very strong need for ethical hackers who are very good at their work. Since almost each and everything is stored online nowadays, there is a higher risk of personal data falling into the wrong hands. And to counter these breaches and hacking attacks, one needs to think like a hacker. And who can think like a hacker than an actual hacker himself? So this concept was given birth, people started calling actual hackers and paid them money to try and breach their systems and make them aware of any of the vulnerabilities that their system has. And there were laws created for the same as well. Ethical hackers need to follow a code of conduct so that they don’t lose their license and commit a criminal offense. It is not allowed for an ethical hacker to keep any form of data, no matter how small or big it is for him/herself for personal gains. And there should be no breach of trust as well by the ethical hacker, he/she should not share the data procured with anyone but the owner of that data.

An ethical hacker needs to follow a certain procedure for hacking into the systems and for that they need to start with taking approvals for the testing and then later formulating a plan and procedure as to how they are going to carry out the hack. They need to be very well informed about all the tools that are present for hacking or cracking to make the work more accurate, fast and efficient. But one wrong tool or one wrong move can bring down the entire effort of the testing so there should be a back-up plan also available, just in case it is required. Also, the time of the testing should be determined and should be only decided by consulting with the owner of the system, it helps keep everyone in the same wavelength and helps in avoiding any form of miscommunication. There are many ethical hackers out there nowadays, but not everyone can be trusted, so choose the one who is a certified ethical hacker and knows how to do the job. It is also important for rookie hackers to not get over-excited and rush all the tests at the same time. This may result in the lockdown of the computer system or the networks that are trying to be breached. All of the data that is being tested upon is at risk even at the time of ethical hacking; no one can deny the fact that there is an actual possibility of an actual attack happening at the same time as the testing is going on. So an ethical hacker needs to be very careful all the time.