If you are an internet user, you must be acquainted to the term ‘hacking’. While most of us consider it bad-boys official work, there exist some ethical hackers as well. These guys work for government and other authorized bodies and get paid for cracking down system and program.
Ethical hackers penetrate systems, so as to provide solutions against proliferating cybercrimes. So to sum up, they take control of system and peep into what’s hidden there, and do it for all good reasons. Further, they understand vulnerabilities of a system in order to find solutions to prevent them. Having said this, all this work requires are some skills and certifications. If you are trying to become one, then must practice White-hat hacking and discern black-hat tactics. Here is a one-stop guide to become ethical hacker.
- Evaluate the principles of hacking:
Hacking has always been a controversial term. There exist different types of hacking- White-hat hacking, Grey-hat hacking and Black-hat hacking. The former two are practiced for legal jobs, while the latter is referred for illegal jobs. Apparently, the underlying difference lies in the purpose they are served for. When doing ethical hacking, you’ll have to focus on ‘Penetration Testing’, which helps you identify vulnerabilities in a system or program. With this, you’d protect system or apps from external attacks.
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- Evaluate and update your skills and academics:
Becoming an ethical hacker doesn’t require some special criteria. Perhaps, you can become an ethical hacker if you have a degree in Mathematics, Computer Science or Information Technology. Further, you need to learn programming for you to do ethical hacking. You need to have good command over several programming languages such as C++, Java, PHP, Python, etc. Apart from this, having knowledge about operating systems such as UNIX, Windows, LINUX and iOS will be added benefit in ethical hacking.
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- Practice:
Once you have you the degree and you have become proficient in the programming languages, you should proceed to practice ethical hacking. You need to practice penetration testing and peep into a system or app/program.
- Get Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH):
Now when you have become skillful with hacking, you must get certified. You can rely on EC-Council for the same since is the most trusted body to get certification in ethical hacking. The qualification includes mastering penetration testing, footprinting, reconnaissance, and social engineering. Further, its course involves creating Trojan horses, backdoors viruses, worms, denial of service (DoS) attacks, SQL injection, buffer overflow, session hijacking, and system hacking.
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This will make you learn how to hack web servers, session hijacking, system hacking, scan and sniff networks, crack wireless encryption and evade IDSs, firewalls and honeypots. For this, you’ll also have to take online training course, which is generally for 5 consecutive days. In addition, you can also opt for self-study with study material for the same.
These are 4 steps to become an ethical hacker. So now, if you have developed an interest towards hacking, do pursue it. Nevertheless, do make it ethical or legal by practicing White-hat hacking.