Ethical Hacking 101

Written by Fizza Ayub Khawaja on Saturday, 24 December 2022. Posted in Business Education

As the world moves further on into the digital age, computers have become man’s new best friend. However, one key weakness of computer’s cannot be ignored: they can be exploited by humans. Hacking is spread far and wide, with no data ever being completely safe— the concept of ethical hacking rose naturally as a solution to a worrying predicament. 

Ethical hackers, also known as ‘white hats’, in simplified terms, are security experts who test the strength of computers or digital security systems by trying to hack into them as someone with malicious intentions would. Approved by the organizations that hire them, their fundamental task is to spot vulnerabilities in the system and point them out before they can be exploited. 

However, ethical hacking does have some standard procedures that white hats are bound to follow. While duplicating malicious strategies is normally allowed, and in some cases even encouraged, they have to adhere to four basic principles: legality, definition of scope, reporting all vulnerabilities and respecting data sensitivity and privacy. Any misstep or slacking off on these four notions can easily tip the scales from ethical to malignant. 

On the topic of ethics and malice, some key elements segregate white hats from malicious hackers. The latter usually sully sensitive data for financial loss, personal gain or PR crashes. White hats not only lack any personal incentive or vendetta but almost always retest systems after reporting their suggested enforcements, ensuring that the system is as unbreachable as possible. 

Expanding on the whole process of ethical hacking, white hats typically mimic an attacker, Using an amalgamation of manual and automated testing, they not only hack into systems but test how easily sensitive information can be obtained. Furthermore, they then exploit that data to analyze how an attacker might think of capitalizing on the opportunity they are presented with. Some of the most common weaknesses that ethical hackers discover are misconfiguration of security codes, private data exposure and injection attacks. As soon as the testing period is finished, they submit a report outlining each issue present, making sure that no vulnerability is left unassessed or mitigated. 

However, as beneficial ethical hacking may be, it comes with its downsides. First and foremost, without an incentive driving the white hats to discover all faults, they subjectively may underestimate the lengths to which a malicious hacker may go. From an objective perspective, white hats do have a limited scope, meaning, they cannot go beyond some ordained limits when testing the systems. Secondly, malicious hackers carry out their agendas with a lot of time, finance and planning. However, ethical hackers do not have free reign over these factors. Lastly, organizations may ask white hats not to partake in hacking methods that can cause damages to their softwares, but this notion is bound to be ignored by a malicious hacker. 

Conclusively, ethical hacking is a more than necessary field, especially since digitization is the foreseeable future of businesses, banks and almost all of daily life. While white hats may lack some key elements that a malicious hacker would pointedly have access to, its imperative to evaluate the considerable benefits of reducing the risk of malicious hacking in the first place. Ethical hacking is bound to progress, gain momentum and stronger methods of practice as time goes on.

About the Author

Fizza Ayub Khawaja

Fizza Ayub Khawaja

Fizza is a Business Education Writer at Girls For Business.

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