Hacking is a term that’s never associated with anything good, especially in today’s tech attacks-driven world. However,…
Ethical hackers do exist, using hacking techniques for good and hacking the hackers. Ethical hacking might sound like a contradiction, but is a rather critical component of enterprise cybersecurity today.
It’s basically an authorized attempt to gain unauthorized access to data, applications, or a computer system using the actions and strategies usually used by malicious attackers. The objective? To help identify security vulnerabilities that can be resolved before malicious entities have the opportunity to exploit the enterprise in the first place. If you’re thinking about the real-world use of ethical hacking, the practice is even making inroads in banking security, with AI and human hackers working side by side to scan the attack surface and build a robust defence network for banks – and the public’s money.
Who Are Ethical Hackers And What Do They Do?
Different kinds of hackers are named based on their intention to hack the system. Broadly, there are two main kinds of hackers – black-hat and white-hat hackers. These names are inspired by old Spaghetti Westerns, where the bad guys wear black hats and the good guys wear white hats. While black hat hackers are the kinds with all kinds of malicious (usually monetary) intents, ethical hackers are the white hats, who don’t intend to harm the organization or the system. Rather, they do so officially to help enterprises with their cybersecurity, helping them locate any vulnerabilities and providing security solutions to ensure cyber safety.
Ethical hackers basically help enterprises and businesses answer these critical cybersecurity questions:
- What data or systems are the most at risk?
- What vulnerabilities could attackers exploit?
- What damages could attackers cause with the compromised data or systems?
- How many security layers are needed to log or detect these intrusions?
- What are the best ways to deal with these security vulnerabilities?
Types Of Ethical Hacking
Ethical hacking efforts are widely prevalent in industries that handle large quantities of sensitive information and data, like healthcare, finance, etc., which possess highly sensitive patient information and banking details. Even the tech industry makes extensive use of ethical hacking.
Ethical hacking techniques employ everything from penetration testing to vulnerability assessment, focusing specifically on breaching the defences of the enterprise. Other activities include evaluating networks, applications, and systems and even checking for weaknesses among the processes and the people that make an organization more vulnerable to hackers. These include the likes of lack of security training, failure to update systems, and usage of weak passwords.
Ethical hacking has saved the day in a number of cases — for example, Baptiste Robert, a French researcher, found a unique vulnerability in a WordPress plugin that accidentally exposed the personal data of Twitter (now X) users in 2019. The company eventually revoked the plugin’s keys, eliminating the threat.
Penetration Testing: One of the most important subsets of ethical hacking, penetration testing focuses specifically on breaching an enterprise’s applications, networks, and systems. This could mean anything from a man-in-the-middle attack (trying to intercept traffic between two devices to siphon sensitive data) to carrying out DOS attacks (denial of service) by overloading the system with traffic or even trying to inject malicious code into a website.
System Hacking: This kind of hacking involves employing specialized commercial tools to hack into individual systems. This could mean obtaining or cracking passwords from databases of usernames/passwords exposed after a data breach, installing malicious software, and exploiting the system’s vulnerabilities.
Web Application Testing: In web app testing, hackers try to uncover problems and cybersecurity issues with applications and websites before they go live. This means they specifically look for vulnerabilities such as security misconfigurations, cross-site scripting (XSS), and SQL injection.
Network Hacking: One of the most widely used methods of ethical hacking is network hacking, where white hats will scan for any and all weaknesses in network security. They’ll look for weaknesses in network protocols, vulnerable services, and even open ports. Further, they will also check for vulnerabilities in wireless networks that could end up allowing unintended interception of data or even accidental unauthorized access.
Internal Testing: Finally, internal testing hacking sees white hats and looks for weaknesses amongst the people and processes within an enterprise, usually human error of one kind or another. This means looking for failure to update devices and systems, weak passwords, and whether there’s been any lack of training that leads to employees falling victim to phishing scams and other kinds of fraud, or for carrying out actions that compromise security.
In The End
It’s evident that ethical hacking has a lot of benefits: it can protect them from losing their reputation, save them large sums of money, and uncover their weak spots before they can be exploited. More specifically, they improve corporate cybersecurity measures and prevent data breaches, thus helping organizations build growing trust with customers.
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