Ethical hacking is a new way of looking at hacking which is used to finding weak spots in the program or system for the purpose of testing and fixing those weak points. It is normally performed by skilled developers or by a system knowledgeable person. Few people think that ethical hacking is illegal.
Over the past few years, with the evolution and advancement in technology, software development has gone to next level. The IT sector is rapidly growing with advanced systems and services which further leads to the rise in the number of hackers. In the past 3 years, cyber breaches have increased up to 350%. This figure does not only include small businesses, but also large enterprises. Yes, large enterprises have become the victim of cyber attacks. So the demand for ethical hackers in the market has increased rapidly.
Educational Qualification :
For being a reputed ethical hacker, the first idea is you need to acquire a bachelor’s degree, master’s degree or enrol in IT-related programs. There are numerous colleges available where you can get this degree by qualifying exams through distance learning or full-time learning course.
You can also go for ethical hacking training program or certification program offered by multiple training centres. EC Council is one of the famous and effective ethical hacking certification providers in the world.
Network Security :
The prime attribute of ethical hacking is networking. For a successful career, you must have knowledge of networking hardware and software resources.
Courses like CCNA, CCNP, CCIP are very beneficial for grabbing an outstanding opportunity in the hacking field.
Understanding Computing :
You need to have hands-on experience and knowledge of basic computer languages like C, C++, Python, Java because these are the trending languages and most of the applications or systems are developed using these languages.
- You must have the understanding of popular operating systems like Linux, Windows, iOS etc.
- Companies like Microsoft, Cisco offer the ethical hacking certification program.
- In spite of these attributes, your problem-solving skills, algorithm designing skills and mathematical computing skills can be very beneficial and effective.
Ethical Hacking Tools :
So many ethical hacking tools are available in the market for better understanding and getting a practical experience in the field. These simulators are designed for different purposes. Some of these tools are:
- NMAP: It stands for network mapper. It is a tool openly available for discovering network and auditing security.
- Metasploit: It allows you to perform penetration testing on smaller networks by checking vulnerability.
- Angry IP Scanner: This tool scans IP addresses of any range and with the help of extensions it can give information about scanned IP’s.
- Cain & Abel: It is a password recovery application for Microsoft.
- SuperScan: SuperScan is a very powerful application which can scan Transfer Control Protocol(TCP) and resolves hostnames.
- LC4: This tool is used for testing password strength and recovering password with the help of inbuilt algorithms like brute-force or hybrid attacks.
- WebInspect: This tool finds vulnerabilities in the internet application layer. It also helps in detecting attacks like cross-site scripting(XSS), injections, etc.
- Network Stumbler: This tool is helpful for scanning wide or local area networks. It searches for non-broadcasting wireless networks to verify that network when efficiently configured.
Attackers Hit :
To catch a hacker, you need to think like a hacker. So before starting, you should have a handy understanding of all kinds of cyber attacks and how they are executed. You can monitor and analyse their working and get a better understanding of past resources. Few of them are as follow:
- Password guessing and cracking
- Hijacking Session
- DNS Poisoning
- Spoofing
- Traffic sniffing
- Trojan Attacks
- Denial of Service(DoS) attacks
- Enumeration
- SQL injection
- Exploiting buffer overflow vulnerabilities
Wrap up Brilliant’s idea :
If you possess these skills and you are planning to start or continue a brilliant career in the ethical hacking field, then you are good to go. You can grab multiple job opportunities from government organisations as well as private enterprises because in the last few years, a sharp increase in cyber attacks has caused a huge data and money loss for organisations globally.
