A white hat (or a white hat hacker) is an ethical computer hacker, or a computer security expert, who
focuses on penetration testing and in other testing methodologies that ensures the safety of an
organization’s information systems. Ethical hacking may be a term meant to imply a broader
category than simply penetration testing. Contrasted with black hat, a malicious hacker, the name
comes from Western films, where heroic and antagonistic cowboys might traditionally wear a white
and a black hat respectively. While a white hat hacker hacks under good intentions with permission,
and a black hat hacker, most frequently unauthorized, has malicious intent, there’s a 3rd kind
referred to as a gray hat hacker who hacks with good intentions but sometimes without permission.
White hat hackers can also add teams called “sneakers and/or hacker clubs”,red teams, or tiger
teams.
While penetration testing concentrates on attacking software and computer systems from the
beginning – scanning ports, examining known defects in protocols and applications running on the
system and patch installations, as an example – ethical hacking may include other things. A full-
blown ethical hack might include emailing staff to invite password details, searching through
executive’s dustbins and typically breaking and entering, without the knowledge and consent of the
targets. Only the owners, CEOs and Board Members (stake holders) who asked for such a censoring
of this magnitude are aware. to undertake to duplicate a number of the destructive techniques a true
attack might employ, ethical hackers may arrange for cloned test systems, or organize a hack late in
the dark while systems are less critical. In most up-to-date cases these hacks perpetuate for the long-
term con (days, if not weeks, of long-term human infiltration into an organization). Some examples
include leaving USB/flash key drives with hidden auto-start software during a public area as if
someone
lost
the
tiny
drive
and
an
unsuspecting
employee
found
it
and
took
it.
Some
other
methods
of
completing
these
include:
•
DoS
attacks
•
Social
engineering
tactics
•
Reverse
engineering
•
Network
security
•
Disk
and
memory
forensics
•
Vulnerability
research
•
Security
scanners
such
as:
– W3af
– Nessus
– Burp
suite
• Frameworks
such
as:
– Metasploit
•
Training
Platforms
These methods identify and exploit known security vulnerabilities and plan to evade security to
realize entry into secured areas. they’re ready to do that by hiding software and system ‘back-doors’
which will be used as a link to information or access that a non-ethical hacker, also referred to as
‘black-hat’ or ‘grey-hat’, might want to succeed in .
