Cybercrime has now become a global danger, threatening the entire world with data breaches,
online frauds, and other security issues. Hundreds of new laws have been enacted to protect
netizens’ rights and transactions in the virtual realm. They must remember these laws in order
to penetrate a system or network with good intentions.
What is hacking?
Hacking is defined as a malicious act that aims to access digital devices such as computers,
mobile phones, tablets, and even entire networks to harm or destroy systems, obtain user
information, or hamper data-related activity. Hacking is impossible without highly
experienced and trained hackers in a particular field.
Types of hacking:
Network Hacking
Website hacking
Computer hacking
Password hacking
Email hacking
Types of hackers:
White Hat Hackers
Black Hat Hackers
Grey Hat Hackers
Miscellaneous Hackers
Red Hat Hackers
Blue Hat Hackers
Elite Hackers
Script Kiddie
Neophyte
Hacktivist
Ethical Hacking.
When we talk about Ethical Hacking, it is explicitly implied that we are talking about hacking
that is based on ethical or moral values, without any ill intent. Ethical Hacking is defined as
any form of hacking that is authorized by the owner of the target system. It can also refer to
the process of taking active security measures to defend systems from hackers with malicious
intentions for data privacy.
Why is ethical hacking important?
Let’s understand why Ethical Hacking or penetration testing is such an important field. For
this, we need to understand some of the many use cases and types of Ethical Hacking. Here
are a few of them:
- Testing password strength
- Ensuring security settings and privilege levels in the domain account and database
administration by testing out exploits - Penetration testing after every software update/upgrade or after adding a new security
patch - Ensuring that data communication channels cannot be intercepted
- Testing validity of authentication protocols
- Ensuring security features in applications, which protect organizational and user
databases - Defence against denial-of-service attacks
- Network security and testing of anti-intrusion features
Benefits of Ethical Hacking
There are various advantages of hacking:
- It is used to recover lost information, especially when you lost your password.
- It is used to perform penetration testing to increase the security of the computer and
network. - It is used to test how good security is on your network.
Is Ethical hacking legal?
Cybercrime has now become a global danger, threatening the entire world with data breaches,
online frauds, and other security issues. Hundreds of new laws have been enacted to protect
netizens’ rights and transactions in the virtual realm. They must remember these laws in order
to penetrate a system or network with good intentions.
To address the issue of network security, governments and businesses have begun to employ a
strategy in which they test their security by having computer security personnel hack into
their systems. In this profession, the personnel enters the system as the crackers do, but they
report the system flaws instead of causing damage or stealing information. Also, ethical
hacking is done with the owner’s permission to find loopholes in the system and offer
solutions to improve it. Ethical hacking protects the system from further damage caused by
hackers. Nowadays various institutions offer many Ethical hacking courses.