Ethical Hacking

A hacker in the 1990's was someone who was vry skilled in programming and who was able to build a complex aplication based on logics. Over time this word changed it's meaning and today a hacker is someone who discovers new ways into breaking networks, systems or programmable logic controllers.

There are three types of hackers :

1.      White hat hacker—This kind of hacker is often referred to as a security professional or security researcher. Such hackers are employed by an organization and are permitted to attack an organization to find vulnerabilities that an attacker might be able to exploit.

2.      Black hat hacker—Also known as a cracker, this kind of hacker is referred to as a bad guy, who uses his or her knowledge for negative purposes. They are often referred to by the media as hackers.

3.      Gray hat hacker—This kind of hacker is an intermediate between the previous two. For instance, a gray hat hacker would work as a security professional for an organization and responsibly disclose everything to them; however, he or she might leave a backdoor to access it later and might also sell the confidential information to competitors.

Another way of categorizing the hackers is by their knowledge. There are :

1.      Script kiddie—Also known as skid, this kind of hacker is someone who lacks knowledge that  may be able to compromise a target but certainly cannot debug or modify an exploit in case it does not work.

2.      Elite hacker—An elite hacker, also referred to as l33t or 1337, is someone who has deep knowledge on how an exploit works; he or she is able modify codes that someone else wrote.

3.      Hacktivist—Hacktivists are defined as group of hackers that hack into computer systems for a cause or purpose. The purpose may be political gain, freedom of speech, human rights, and so on.

4.      Ethical hacker—An ethical hacker is as a person who is hired and permitted by an organization to attack its systems for the purpose of identifying vulnerabilities, which an attacker might take advantage of. The sole difference between the terms “hacking” and “ethical hacking” is the permission.