Ethical Hacking

Ethical Hacking sometimes called Penetration Testing is an act of intruding/penetrating into a system or networks to find out threats, vulnerabilities in those systems which a malicious attacker may find and exploit causing loss of data, financial loss, or other major damages. The purpose of ethical hacking is to improve the security of the network or systems by fixing the vulnerabilities found during testing. Ethical hackers may use the same methods and tools used by the malicious hackers but with the permission of the authorized person for the purpose of improving the security and defending the systems from attacks by malicious users.

Ethical hackers are expected to report all the vulnerabilities and weaknesses found during the process to the management.

What are the types of Hackers?

Hackers can be segregated according to their intent.

White Hat Hacker

It is another name for an Ethical Hacker. They hack into a system with prior permission to find out vulnerabilities so that they can be fixed before a person with malicious intent finds them.

Black Hat Hacker

They are also known as crackers, who hack in order to gain unauthorized access to a system & harm its operations or steal sensitive information. It’s always illegal because of its malicious intent which includes stealing corporate data, violating privacy, damaging the system, etc.

Grey Hat Hacker

They are a blend of both black hat and white hat hackers. They mostly hack for fun and exploit a security weakness in a computer system or network without the owner’s permission or knowledge. Their intent is to bring the weakness to the attention of the owners & earning some bug bounty.

Suicide Hacker

A suicide hacker is a person who works with the intent to bring down major corporations and infrastructure. These kinds of hackers are not scared of the consequences of their actions as they mostly work with a vengeance in their minds. These people are also known as hacktivists.

What are the different types of hacking?

Now that we have discussed the various types of Hackers, let’s go over the different types of hacking. We can segregate hacking into different types depending on what the hacker is trying to achieve.

Website Hacking

Hacking a website means taking unauthorized control over a web server and its associated software such as databases and other interfaces.

Network Hacking

Hacking a network means gathering information about a network by using tools like Telnet, NS lookup, Ping, Tracert, Netstat, etc. with the intent to harm the network system and hamper its operation.

Email Hacking

This includes gaining unauthorized access to an email account and using it without taking the consent of its owner for sending out spam links, third-party threats, and other such harmful activities.

Password Hacking

This is the process of recovering secret passwords from data that has been stored in or transmitted by a computer system.

Computer Hacking

This is the process of stealing computer IDs and passwords by applying hacking methods and getting unauthorized access to a computer system.

Types of ethical hacking

There are different kinds of ethical hacking practices since almost every component of a system can be hacked and these ‘hacking’ performances require deep knowledge regarding that component. Below you can find a list of different ethical hacking practices.

• Web application hacking
• Social engineering
• System hacking
• Hacking wireless networks
• Web server hacking