Chapter 1: Introduction to Ethical Hacking

Hacking is an unauthorized access into a system of any kind. By the word any kind, I literally mean any, any kind, be it a digital system or one without even a single digital component. The suitable name for one who breaks into computer's hardware or software is "Cracker", but in general use hacker is the term that has got more attention.

 Ethical Hacking
Hacking made ethical is ethical hacking. The expert computer crackers are called on for deliberate hacking attempt by the authorities of an organization, in order to test their own security level to be aware of their own vulnerabilities. Thus, ethical hacking is hacking a system to know its vulnerabilities by gaining full authority from concerned organization for such an attempt.

In today's world of cyber-crime, almost every organization, business need security. The best way to be secured is to think in the way as that of attacker. Thus, ethical hacking is soaring in importance and hence the popularity.

 Types of Hackers

• Black Hat
• One who hacks to gain attacks into an unauthorized zone in order to access money, trusts, valuable data with motive of political, economic, religious etc benefits.  
• White Hat
• A non-malign hacker who hacks for vulnerability analysis by gaining authority from organization itself
• Gray Hat
• Those hackers who pretend to be white hats but are black hat
• Suicide Hacker 
• A hacker who does not have full prior knowledge of target, target environment and prevailing laws
• Script Kiddie
• One who  is new to hacking or just knows few underlying concepts and attacks the target using code or scripts of others

 This was a basic introduction of Ethical Hacking. There is a lot more to it in its technical details. In the next chapter, I will discuss about Footprints, an important aspect of hacking.

Disclaimer: By publishing this article and this series of complete ethical hacking, I , by no means encourage any of malicious hacking attempt and am myself against such attempts.