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Understanding Ethical Hacking

An ethical hacker is a computer security expert who tests systems by attempting to hack into them in order to find and report vulnerabilities to clients, similar to how real hackers would operate but with the goal of improving security rather than enabling harm. Ethical hacking, also known as penetration testing, involves simulating methods that malicious attackers use but reporting issues found rather than taking advantage of them. The practice began in the 1970s when the US government hired "red teams" of experts to hack into and test their own systems, and it has since grown in popularity and importance across both government and private sectors.

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Jimmy Khan
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381 views1 page

Understanding Ethical Hacking

An ethical hacker is a computer security expert who tests systems by attempting to hack into them in order to find and report vulnerabilities to clients, similar to how real hackers would operate but with the goal of improving security rather than enabling harm. Ethical hacking, also known as penetration testing, involves simulating methods that malicious attackers use but reporting issues found rather than taking advantage of them. The practice began in the 1970s when the US government hired "red teams" of experts to hack into and test their own systems, and it has since grown in popularity and importance across both government and private sectors.

Uploaded by

Jimmy Khan
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd

ethical hacker

Reprints An ethical hacker is a computer and network expert who attacks a security system on behalf of its owners, seeking vulnerabilities that a malicious hacker could exploit. To test a security system, ethical hackers use the same methods as their less principled counterparts, but report problems instead of taking advantage of them. Ethical hacking is also known aspenetration testing, intrusion testing and red teaming. An ethical hacker is sometimes called a white hat, a term that comes from old Western movies, where the "good guy" wore a white hat and the "bad guy" wore a black hat. One of the first examples of ethical hackers at work was in the 1970s, when the United States government used groups of experts called red teams to hack its own computer systems. According to Ed Skoudis, Vice President of Security Strategy for Predictive Systems' Global Integrity consulting practice, ethical hacking has continued to grow in an otherwise lackluster IT industry, and is becoming increasingly common outside the government and technology sectors where it began. Many large companies, such as IBM, maintain employee teams of ethical hackers. In a similar but distinct category, a hacktivist is more of a vigilante: detecting, sometimes reporting (and sometimes exploiting) security vulnerabilities as a form of social activism.

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