Hacking

We often hear about websites getting hacked and lots of confidential information getting compromised.  What is hacking? Hacking is a mechanism for detecting vulnerabilities of a system so as to build more robust systems. In my opinion, hacking is the best way to learn how a system works. But now-a-days hacking refers to exploiting the vulnerabilities of a system. How do hackers get hold of a system in the first place? Simple, they just wave their magical hacking wand and that’s it, the system is infected. Unfortunately, it does not work that way. To infect a system, hackers write a program and get it installed on the victim computer through e-mails, peer-to-peer networks or even regular websites. Once the system is infected, hackers can easily access the system and get the information they want.

Most of us think that hackers are very experienced and skilled programmers. You know what? That is not always the case. Investigators who monitor botnets say that the programs some hackers use are primitive and poorly programmed.

Also not all hackers use hacking to their advantage. This group of hackers who break the security for non-malicious reasons are known as white hat hackers. No wonder that white hat hackers are also known as ethical hackers. Many companies hire ethical hackers to test and find out the level of security of their systems. So, don’t learn to hack, hack to learn.

More on ethical hacking can be found here.