Ethical Hacking: Good or Bad?

Aditi Mishra, aditi.mishra@kalingauniversity.ac.in

Assistant Professor (CS)

Kalinga University, Naya Raipur

Abstract:-

The massive growth of digital India lead to the peoples using IT as a whole. All the information are very easily available in a bot. Some use IT for information gathering, research, gaining knowledge whereas there are also someone who use it for their evil mind. To steal data from websites or database and to use it for their own fun are a very common way for stealer. They are the one known as HACKER. This paper discuss about the types of hacking, various hacking techniques and details about Ethical hackers.

Introduction:-

The term HACKING defines the activities that compromise digital devices, networks to get access information or data in unauthorized way. Hacking is not always malicious activity but it can be associated with cybercrime activity. A hacker is a person who is Master in programming language, network and is computer enthusiastic person.  He always love to learn new technologies to enhance his skills and capabilities to better understand minute details of a computer system.

Hacking consist of two types: Black hat Hacking and White hat Hacking. Black hat hacking are the hacking activities that use data or information for illegal or malicious purposes. Generally we can say that black hat hackers are bad person who break the system integrity or violate system intentionally. They target to cause problem to destroy data or gain unauthorized access.

White hat is an ethical security hacker. These are the good people who exploits for some great cause. Basically White hat hackers are computer security specialist who uses their skills and knowledge for an organization to protect it from any suspicious or malicious hacking. They find loopholes in the company network or computer system of organization and try to remove or improve it.

Hacking Techniques:-

There are several hacking techniques that hackers uses for its purposes. Some commonly used hacking techniques are:

1. Phishing: Phishing is the hacking technique through which a hacker replicates the most accessed sites common e commerce sites and traps the victim by sending spoofed link. Once victim clicks that link the hackers get all the private information of victim using Trojan running on fake website.
2. Cracking Passwords: Hackers can get victims important credentials through a number of means, such as key logging, in which undetected software accidentally downloaded by the victim and can record keystrokes of victim by attacker for their work.  This includes saving usernames and passwords as they are entered on the infected computer.
3. DDOS: Distributed Denial of Service attack targets the victim server with bulk of traffic that the server overloads it by getting more request than it can handle. This aims the server website so that user cannot access it or to deliver its service.
4. Bait and Switch Attack: This method use trusted marketing methods such as paid for advertising on websites through which attackers trick victim to visit into malicious sites. These websites credentials can be purchased by rogue attackers. Also the advertisement can be replaced with a ‘bad’ link that can be used to download malicious software.
5. Cookie Theft: The cookies from the web browsers store personal data such as browsing history, username and passwords. Hackers will send IP packets through which if websites is not SSL certified then they can steal data.

Ethical Hacker:-

Ethical hacking involves an authorized attempt to gain unauthorized access to a computer system, application, or data. Carrying out an ethical hack involves duplicating strategies and actions of malicious attackers. This practice helps to identify security vulnerabilities which can then be resolved before a malicious attacker has the opportunity to exploit them.

Ethical Hacker Key Concept:-

Ethical hacker must follow following key concept:

1. Proper approval must be obtained before accessing security assessments.
2. Ethical hacker works must remain legal within the organization’s approved boundaries.
3. During assessment organization must be notified with all vulnerabilities and its remedial activity.
4. Ethical hackers must have to agree to non-disclosure agreement required by the assessment organization.