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What Is Hacking?
Hacking refers to activities that seek to identify weaknesses and compromise digital devices, such as smartphones, computers tablets, and even entire networks or system infrastructure for some illicit purpose like steal or manipulate information, data or files, etc. Hacking is done using several types of malicious programs such as Virus, Trojan, Rootkit, Keylogger, etc. Hackers also use other techniques like spoofing, browser hijacks, phishing, etc. Hacking is illegal and can lead to extreme outcomes if you are caught in the act. The person involved in this process is called as a hacker.
What Is Ethical Hacking?
The purpose of ethical hacking is to finding and attempting to exploit any vulnerabilities in systems, networks, or digital devices, etc to determine whether unauthorized access or other malicious activities are possible to fix them and prevent malicious hackers from breaking in the security system. Ethical hacking is done with the owner’s permission. Many companies and government agencies hire hackers to help them secure their systems. The person involved in this process is called as a ethical hacker.
Types Of Hackers
- Black Hat Hackers:- Black hat hackers are the cyber offender that we should be worried about. Black hats are usually involved with criminal activities. They hack in order to gain unauthorized access to a system & harm its operations, steal personal information, or shutting down websites and networks. Black hats usually target businesses, healthcare, or financial institutions where they can reach the crucial sensitive information. Their activities can cause huge damage to their systems and targets.
- White Hat Hackers:- White hat hackers or ethical hackers have ethical behavior they use their knowledge and skills to penetrate the loopholes to improve the security of IT infrastructure from other malicious cyber attackers. They use the same tools and methods black hats do, but unlike black hats, white hats have the permission of the system owner to use those methods. They help the owner in protecting there IT infrastructure from harmful attacks
- Grey Hat Hackers:- Gray hat hackers are a blend of both black hat and white hat hackers. They are not as ethical as white hats and also not as bad as black hats. Grey hats have both good and bad intentions mostly they hack for fun and exploit a security weakness for personal or political gain etc. So they hack without the owner’s permission or knowledge. Sometimes their intentions are to bring the weakness to the attention of the owners and earning some bug bounty.
- Script Kiddies:- A script kiddie is a non-expert and doesn’t care much about the coding skills and hack into computer systems by using pre-packaged automated tools written by others to impress their friends or gain attention. They launch attacks without bothering for the quality of the attack. Most of the time script kiddie executes DoS and DDoS attacks.
- Hacktivist:- Hacktivists main motive is to break into government or big corporations out of protest. They believe that they can bring social changes by protest the acts of government and uses their skills to promote a political or social agenda. Hacktivist hacks government and big organizations information to express their disapproval against any movement, and to announce a social, ideological, religious, or political message.
- State/Nation Sponsored Hackers:- State/nation sponsored hackers are hired by governments to gain access to secret information of other governments. They have an unlimited budget and extremely powerful hacking tools at their disposal to target individuals, companies, or rival nations.
- Cyber Terrorists:- Cyber terrorists are hackers who are affected by political or religious beliefs and work to cause fear and interruption of systems and networks.
- Malicious Insider or Whistleblower:- A malicious hacker or a whistleblower is a strategic employee who either operates individually or compromised or hired by rivals to garner trade secrets of their opponents So they stay ahead in the competition. Whistleblowers can profit rivals because they are aware of the entire system.
- Neophyte:- A neophyte, "newbie" or "n00b" or "Green Hat Hacker" is similar to Script Kiddies, but with a difference, they are new to hacking or phreaking and has almost no knowledge or experience of technology and hacking and they have the curiosity to learn to code or hack.
- Blue Hat Hackers:- A blue hat hacker is someone outside computer security consulting firms who is used to check the errors, vulnerabilities, and loopholes in the software and try to close these gaps before the company launched it. They work the same as white hat hackers. Blue hat hackers words are famous due to Microsoft. Microsoft team invite the hackers outside the organization to find errors, vulnerabilities, and loopholes in their software before launching the event. that's why blue hat hackers are also called Blue Hat Microsoft Hackers.
- Red Hat Hackers:- Red Hat Hackers use similar strategy like white hat hackers. In simple words their acts to restrict the actions of black hat hackers. However, their behavior is ruthless, and that makes them different from other hackers. Red hat hackers trust in taking down the black hat hacker instead of reporting a malicious attack.
Conclusion:- This article is all about hackers. Feel free to ask in the comment section if you have any queries.