Ethical Hacking

What is Ethical Hacking?

Art and Science of determining vulnerabilities within the existing network architecture. The idea of Ethical hacking is to put yourself in the shoes of the hacker and access and monitor the flaws in your own network. It is used to determine the security flaws in the network before the hacker does by using similar tools and techniques as the hacker. If we go by what history has to tell us, Hackers have always been many steps ahead of network security professionals therefore it definitely makes a lot of sense to be prepared.

Types of Ethical Hacking
White Box: Full knowledge of the system. What this means is that you have full information about the system. i.e. you know what IP the database server is running on and what version of the operating system is running on that box etc. This makes it easy for you to learn about the various details and then fingerprint that very system.

Black Box: You have NO knowledge of the system infrastructure. As a Ethical hacker, this should be the one that can help you see things from a hacker’s perspective as you like the hacker doesnt have any initial knowledge about the system)

Vulnerability Assessment:Usually done by using an automated script. The only negative is that your testing will be as good as your tool. The positive is pretty clear, you run an automated script which covers certain things and you are all set for those covered topics.

Penetration Testing: Comprehensive review of vulnerabilities, how to exploit those vulnerabilities and understanding how networks react to them.