Ever thought about a career in cybersecurity? Let’s talk ethical hackers!
In this video we’ll tell you about ethical or white-hat hackers at 4 levels of difficulty.
So let’s begin. Level 1
Let’s start with what a hacker is. In the real world, there are people who want to harm others.
You can also meet such people on the internet. Hackers abuse gadgets, like a phone, a computer,
or a PlayStation, to harm their owners. They can use them to spy on you,
learn your secrets, steal something, or simply break them.
These are the bad hackers. But some are actually nice — they call themselves white-hat hackers.
If you’ve ever heard stories about Robin Hood,
you can think of white-hat hackers in the same way, but on computers.
Robin Hood steals just like criminals often do — but he does it for a good cause. To help the poor.
White-hat hackers are a bit like that too. They use the ways of the bad guys to help others.
For example, they can break into someone's computer. But instead of stealing something,
they’ll tell the owner of the computer how to protect it better.
Level 2
Have you seen any undercover cop movies like Miss Congeniality or Fast and Furious?
Or movies featuring bounty hunters like The Empire Strikes Back? Then you have a pretty
good idea of how white-hat hackers operate. They do things that would be illegal under
any other circumstances to find flaws in a computer system. What makes this legal, though,
is that the people who hire them know about it. So, let’s say your school hires a white-hat hacker
to improve the school’s digital security. To know what they should patch up, they first have to
figure out what the school’s biggest risks are. So, the white-hat hacker tries a bunch of
different cyberattacks to break into your school's online grade book.
But instead of changing every student’s grades to As, they then tell the school how they did it:
what exact steps they took, what the system’s vulnerabilities are, and how to fix them.
For all their hard work, they get a reward — a so-called bug bounty.
A bug bounty is compensation for reporting bugs, especially if they’re security-related.
Level 3 Whether white-hat or
black-hat, hacking is much more than just figuring out flaws in a computer system.
Hacker culture values innovation and creativity. Hackers explore software
limitations, search for advanced protection solutions, and advocate for internet freedom.
Ethical hackers can work with organizations and companies to improve their security.
They can also be hired as freelancers who fulfill security bounties for cash rewards.
They have many techniques to do that. For example,
penetration testing concentrates on attacking software and computer systems. They may even
undertake full-blown heists like breaking into an office to rummage through the company CEO’s trash.
Or they may send emails to everyone in the workplace asking for their password details.
But they also can use black-hat techniques to subvert laws or steal from corporations for what
they might consider a good cause. For example, they may expose some info in the public interest
in an attempt to help society. Level 4
As we mentioned before, there are lots of ways to go about white-hat hacking.
The first is working for a cybersecurity firm. You can also be a freelance white-hatter
and use bug bounty platforms like HackerOne. HackerOne connects companies and institutions
with vulnerability researchers. For example, in 2016, the U.S.
Department of Defense launched the 24-day program "Hack the Pentagon" using the HackerOne platform.
This led to the discovery of nearly 140 vulnerabilities across the DoD websites.
As you can imagine, some ethical hackers have dabbled in not-so-ethical hacks before.
One of them is Marcus Hutchins, who left a life of crime to become a cybersecurity researcher.
His most notable achievement was temporarily stopping the WannaCry ransomware that spread like
wildfire through an exploit in the Microsoft Windows Server Message Block.
Once Hutchins learned about WannaCry, he started reverse-engineering its code. He then discovered
that the malware was tied to an odd-looking domain name. That suggested WannaCry was part of
a command-and-control structure common to botnets. He registered the domain and set up servers
to act as honeypots. This functioned as a sinkhole, temporarily stopping the attack.
Unfortunately, we can’t all hire a white-hat hacker to point out
the vulnerabilities in our personal devices. But that doesn’t mean we can’t be proactive!
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And check out these videos for more cybersecurity concepts explained!
Stay safe out there.