People who have expertise in the field of computers to obtain access rights to a system without permission/illegally are hackers.
Currently, a hacker does not only carry out cyber crimes, but many companies use the expertise of hackers to protect systems and data security.
If you want to become a hacker, be a professional or ethical hacker! Your job is to secure and analyze security holes in a company’s system and then report them for prevention.
Ethical Hacking Roles and Responsibilities
Ethical Hacking is a form of official practice that Cyber Security Engineers usually carry out in a company or organization to identify potential threats and data breaches in the network.
Through this practice, the Cyber Security Engineer will investigate the web to find weak points that the black hat or malicious hackers might infiltrate.
This ethical Hacking or white hat will later analyze and collect information to find ways to strengthen the system, network or application security. In addition, the duties of an ethical hacker also include the following:
- Perform some penetration tests on the system.
- Review and assess network security.
- Research company systems, network structures, and possible penetration sites.
- Provide suggestions for security improvements.
- Perform penetration tests after new security features are implemented.
- Prepare penetration test reports for clients or companies.
- Identify high-level security areas.
Required Skills
Becoming a professional hacker who doesn’t do anything illegal requires many skills that you should start learning to get good at hacking.
1. Use Linux / Open Source
Many hackers choose Linux in addition to open source because it is easy to change many programs that are needed for hacking and are available on Linux.
Linux is more challenging to hack compared to Windows. It is perfect for hackers like you to use Linux to keep yourself safe.
2. Mastering Several Programming Languages
Hackers use a programming language to do system testing or look for loopholes in a system. You should first understand the system they are using before attacking.
For example, for a web application, then you must know about Java. When you want to do a web server test, then you must master how the infrastructure is used and what server is used.
Most importantly, you must understand the logic in programming and other languages. You can learn quickly if you already understand how a program works.
Here’s a list of programming languages that you need to master if you want to become a professional hacker.
- Pythons
- C++
- JavaScript
- PHP
- SQL
- java
- Assembly
- Bash
3. Understanding Architecture & Infrastructure (Cloud Computing)
Understanding the architecture of a system, for example, the cloud where currently all services are created and stored on a cloud server, you also have to learn how the infrastructure of a system works in various cloud service providers such as
- Amazon AWS
- azure
- Google Cloud
- Alibaba Cloud
Not to mention the technologies used, such as Kubernetes, Docker and others, this is important for you to learn before you want to hack into a system.
4. Mastering Javascript Framework (Web Application)
After understanding a system’s architecture, you need to learn web applications in the form of websites or apps this time. When you want to hack a website or application, you must know the javascript framework used by the website.
VueJS
AngularJS
Next Js
5. Web Server Technology
Unlike the architecture of a system, a web server technology is a program that runs to produce a service that users can access.
Usually, a server uses Nginx or apache to run the operating system of Linux. Besides that, servers are differentiated based on services that run using Docker or Kubernetes, so you also have to understand what services are used.
6. IoT Security
IoT Security would help if you found a way to gain access to a system, especially on large networks where you will create
Education
The position of a hacker working at the company is a Security Engineer. It is divided into two teams: the blue and red teams.
The red team is in charge of testing attacks, and the blue team is doing prevention from loopholes found by the red team.
To start, when you want to become a hacker, you have to study several sciences to become a basic cybersecurity expert.
- networking
- programming
- Databases
- Operating System
The Majors Your Can Take
The first step to mastering the skills needed to become a hacker can be found while studying in the informatics engineering department.
Like programming languages, you will get programming courses using Python, C++, SQL, Javascript and others; you will also learn about networking concepts.
Ethical Hacking Rules
1. Get access permission
The essential thing about ethical hacking activity is getting access permission. This access permission is a sign that the activities carried out by ethical hackers are legal and do not violate the rules.
2. Report discoveries
The ethical hacker’s job is to look for loopholes that cybercriminals might exploit. After going through the processes and methods, ethical hackers find findings of both potential hazards and vulnerabilities. These findings must be reported to management and IT to follow up on what needs to be done.
3. Keep inventions secret
Finding loopholes, potential hazards, and other things in a system are confidential, so an ethical hacker is prohibited from divulging these secrets to keep the system safe.
Typically, a company will ask an ethical hacker to sign a non-disclosure agreement (NDA).
4. Remove traces
In addition to reporting and keeping it confidential, ethical hackers must also delete traces after checking systems and networks. It is a preventive measure so that black hat hackers cannot follow the path to the loopholes found by ethical hackers.
Benefits of Ethical Hacking
Some of the benefits of practising ethical hacking are:
- Help overcome cyber terrorism and fight against violations of national security.
- Prevent potential action from hackers.
- Build a system that can prevent data leakage.
- Offers guaranteed security for the banking sector and financial companies.
- Identify and close opportunities for leaks from computer systems and networks.
Ethical Hackers Types
Apart from Black Hat and White Hat Hackers, other terms for other types of hackers are interesting for you to know. So that you can get to see the role of each hacker, here is complete information:
1. Black Hat Hackers
Black Hat-type hackers, known as evil hackers, have the motive to hack for financial gain.
They usually look for business security holes to get information about bank accounts to confidential data. This data will then be sold on the black market or extort the victim to send some money.
2. Gray Hat Hackers
Unlike Black Hat, who has criminal motives to enrich himself, Gray Hat is the opposite. They do hacking to get personal satisfaction.
Finding loopholes in a system’s security, then notifying the business. Even though what Gray Hat does seems reasonable, this practice is illegal because the previous company did not permit it.
3. Blue Hat Hackers
Blue Hat Hackers engage in criminal practices out of spite against companies or businesses.
They practice this by taking existing code for malware and viruses found online and modifying it to perform hacks.
This code will usually be targeted at individuals or businesses that are detrimental to the Blue Hat Hacker.
4. White Hat Hackers
As is known above, White Hat Hacking or Ethical Hacking exists because it aims to inform businesses to find loopholes in the security of a system so that malicious hackers do not easily infiltrate it.