What is Hacking? Who are Hackers?

     Eric Raymond, compiler of “The New Hacker's Dictionary”, defines a hacker as a clever programmer. A "good hack" is a clever solution to a programming problem and "hacking" is the act of doing it. Raymond lists five possible characteristics that qualify one as a hacker, which we paraphrase here:

● A person who enjoys learning details of a programming language or

system

● A person who enjoys actually doing the programming rather

than just theorizing about it
● A person capable of appreciating someone else's hacking
● A person who picks up programming quickly
● A person who is an expert at a particular programming language or system

Types of Hackers:

Hackers can be broadly classified on the basis of why they are hacking system or why the are indulging hacking. There are mainly three types of hacker on this basis

● Black-Hat Hacker

A black hat hackers or crackers are individuals with

extraordinary

computing skills, resorting to malicious or destructive activities. That is black hat hackers use their knowledge and skill for their own personal gains probably by hurting others.

● White-Hat Hacker

White hat hackers are those individuals professing hacker skills and using them for defensive purposes. This means that the white hat hackers use their knowledge and skill for the good of others and for the common good.● ●Grey-Hat Hackers

These are individuals who work both offensively and defensively at

various times. We cannot predict their behaviour. Sometimes they use their skills for the common good while in some other times he uses them for their personal gains.

ETHICAL HACKING

Ethical hacking – defined as “a methodology adopted by ethical hackers to discover the vulnerabilities existing in information systems’ operating environments.”

With the growth of the Internet, computer security has become a

major concern for businesses and governments.

In their search for a way to approach the problem, organizations came to realize that one of the best ways to evaluate the intruder threat to their interests would be to have independent computer security professionals attempt to break into their computer systems.

What do an Ethical Hacker do?

An ethical hacker is a person doing ethical hacking that is he is a security personal who tries to penetrate in to a network to find if there is some vulnerability in the system. An ethical hacker will always have the permission to enter into the target network. An ethical hacker will first think with a mindset of a hacker who tries to get in to the system.

He will first find out what an intruder can see or what others can see. Finding these an ethical hacker will try to get into the system with that information in whatever method he can. If he succeeds in penetrating into the system then he will report to the company with a detailed report about the particular vulnerability exploiting which he got in to the system. He may also sometimes make patches for that particular vulnerability or he may suggest some methods to prevent the vulnerability