What is Ethical Hacking & Its Benifit

what is ethical hacking & Its benefit

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:

1. Expressed (often written) permission to probe the network and attempt to identify potential security risks.
2. You respect the individual’s or company’s privacy.
3. You close out your work, not leaving anything open for you or someone else to exploit at a later time.
4. 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).

Role of an Ethical Hacker – What exactly does an Ethical Hacker do?

As serious security professionals, we almost give “similar security talk” to other business teams in our organization regarding anti-virus definitions, VPNs, encryption, mobile security, social media security, hacking, and so on. But when these security measures are not taken seriously, they fall apart.

This is when vulnerabilities set in and malicious elements seize the opportunity to penetrate the system.
Now comes the “ethical hacker”, whose primary job is to attack his own organization’s system to weed out vulnerabilities before “real hackers” do. The adrenaline rush of being an ethical hacker is unparalleled. Though an ethical hacker’s role is similar to that of a “penetration tester”, it involves broader duties. “The term ethical hacking is said to have been coined by IBM” (White hat (computer security).

Where are they employed?

While the concept of “white hat hacking” is not entirely new, the profession of ethical hacking is growing by leaps and bounds since major corporations like Facebook and Apple, as well as law enforcement agencies are employing “white hat hackers” to seek vulnerabilities and seal them. Every organization has a bug bounty program that rewards those who can find security vulnerabilities.

Who should be an ethical hacker?

As with any profession, passion for the profession is one of the key aspects to success. This, combined with a good knowledge of networking and programming, will help a professional succeed in the ethical hacking field.

What do ethical hackers do?

Apart from the regular pen tester duties, benefit,ethical hackers are associated with other responsibilities. The main idea is to replicate a “real hacker” at work and instead of exploiting the vulnerabilities for malicious purposes, seek countermeasures to seal it. A real hacker might employ all or some of these strategies to penetrate a system:

– Scanning ports and seeking vulnerabilities: An ethical hacker uses port scanning tools like Nmap, Nessus to scan one’s own systems and benefit. The vulnerabilities with each of the ports can be studied and remedial measures can be taken.
– An ethical hacker will examine patch installations and make sure that they cannot be exploited.
-The ethical hacker can engage in social engineering concept like ‘Dumpster diving’. The essence of ‘dumpster diving’ is to rummage through the trash bins for passwords, charts, any sticky notes with crucial information that can be used to generate an attack. To thwart these types of attacks, organizations always insist on employees to shred unwanted paper work and dispose unwanted media appropriately.- An ethical hacker can also employ other social engineering techniques like ‘shoulder surfing’ to gain access to crucial information or play the “kindness card” to trick employees to part with their passwords.
– An ethical hacker will see if he/she can evade IDS(Intrusion Detection systems), IPS (Intrusion Prevention systems), honeypots and firewalls.In addition to this, an ethical hacker can employ other strategies like sniffing networks, bypassing and cracking wireless encryption, and hijacking web servers and web applications. (How to Become an Ethical Hacker, 2012) They also have to deal with issues related to laptop theft and employee fraud.etecting how well the organization reacts to all of these tactics is proof of the strength of security policy and security infrastructure of the organization. An ethical hacker attacks the perimeter defenses as well as the social engineering aspects of an organization as a real hacker will do.

While some may argue that there is no such thing as a “good hacker” and all “white hat hackers” are actually bad hackers who have turned good, the profession is here to stay.