What Is Ethical Hacking?
Ethical hacking is sometimes known as penetration testing or pen testing. It is a legal way of breaking into computers and devices to test the strength of the defenses of organizations. In order to protect yourself from an attack, you need to know and understand how enemy works and fights against you. It is both and challenging and exciting to pursue a career in ethical hacking as you are seen as playing the role of the good guy who is paid to protect the client (Webopedia, 2021).
It is an extremely important as most companies nowadays are networked and constantly sharing and exchanging data and information. The most valuable assets that companies possess are the intellectual assets and therefore they need to be protected from external threats as well as become hardened to eliminate all potential vulnerabilities which may cause the company networks to be attacked.
Companies engage ethical hackers to identify vulnerabilities in their systems. From the penetration tester's point of view, there is no downside: If you hack in past the current defenses, you’ve given the client a chance to close the hole before an attacker discovers it. If you don’t find anything, your client is even happier because they now get to declare their systems “secure enough that even paid hackers couldn’t break into it.” Win-win!
There has to be consent from the party being hacked. Without permission to hack, the attempt at hacking or breaking into a computer system, hacking is considered an illegal offense that can result in prison time and heavy fines (Grimes, 2019)
Figure 1. Image credits: LinkedIn According to ethical hacker Roger A. Grimes in CSO, ethical hacking consists of three steps:
- 1.
Scope and goal setting
- 2.
Exploitation
- 3.
Documentation
The scope and goal setting step involves the actual terms of the contract. These entail the what, the when, the where, and the how an ethical hacker would attempt to breach the system of an organization. To define this step in detail, it involves defining the target and timeframe of the penetration testing.
Exploitation is the step wherein the ethical hacker attempts to break into the target computer system. Hackers are sometimes required to take screenshots of this process or even film themselves as they attempt to hack. These resources can be of use to organizations and the ethical hackers alike as they work towards the final step, documentation.
Documentation is the step wherein the ethical hacker is required to prepares a detailed report for the organization. The contents of this report varies, but in general, ethical hackers report on the vulnerabilities they discovered, where found and how the exploitation took place. The information obtained from this report will enable organizations make fixes to their software with a view to eliminating or mitigation the likelihood of successful illegal hacks (Heimdal Security, 2020).
Figure 2. Image Credits: Heimdal Given the exponential rise in cyber-crime, ethical hacking is in high demand and many organizations will pay heftily for penetration testing. People, like Kevin Mitnick, became ethical hackers after operating as self-taught illegal hackers for long period. Others studied ethical hacking in formal educational institutions thereby becoming professionally certified ethical hacking. A good number of them nowadays who became ethical hackers learned this specialty through a combination of self-taught illegal hacking and formal certification programs (Heimdal security, 2020).