What is hacking
Hacking is the act of identifying and then abusing weaknesses in a computer system or network, its usually used to gain unauthorized access to personal or organizational data. Hacking is not always a mischievous activity, A person who jiggers their personal phone to run custom programs is also, technically speaking, a hacker. But the word has a negative outlook due to its association with cybercrime.
What’s the difference between cyberattacks and hacking?:
The difference is that by cyberattacks you are trying to harm a computer system or its users, hacking is when you try to control or gain access to a system through illegal means. The most important or most noticeable difference is that cyberattacks always harm their targets, while hacking can be neutral, good or bad.
There are three types of hackers:
Malicious hackers (sometimes called black hat hackers) are cybercriminals who hack for evil reasons, discovering vulnerabilities in computer software and system, exploiting their victims for financial, personal gain or for more malicious purposes. Reasons for this could be to carry out corporate espionage, gain reputation or as part of a nation-state hacking campaign.
These people's actions can deal consequential damage to computer users and the organizations they work for. They can steal vulnerable personal information, break into computer and financial systems, and take out the performance of websites and critical networks.
Some black hat hackers carry out cyberattacks directly. While other malicious hackers develop nefarious code to sell to other hackers on the dark web. They either work as a part of a ransomware gang, scam ring, other organized groups, or alone.
Ethical hackers (sometimes called "white hat hackers") make use of their hacking skills to help companies discover and patch security vulnerabilities so malicious hackers can’t abuse them. Ethical hackers work to prove their skills and build trust to the companies as security consultants or employees, for them to start hacking they must follow a strict code of conduct, ask permission, don’t cause damage and keep their findings confidential, ethical hacking is a real job. Ethical hackers offer a hacking service called penetrating testing or pen testing, where they carry out fake cyberattacks against networks, web applications or other assets to find their weaknesses. They then inform the organization/ owners of the assets of what they found and help strengthen those weaknesses. If you want to know more about this subject,
click here
