What is a White Hat Hacker?

White hat hacker

A definition of a "white hat hacker"

Sometimes referred to as "ethical hackers" or "good hackers," white hats are the polar opposite of black hats in the cyber security world. They take advantage of vulnerable computer systems or networks in order to discover security holes and offer solutions for fixing them.

In other words, what does it mean to be a "white hat" hacker?

To protect businesses from malicious hackers, white hat hackers expose security flaws by exploiting them. Experts in the field of security, are hired by businesses to investigate potential vulnerabilities.

As a rule, major corporations have fewer website troubles and less downtime because of white hat hackers. Hackers are often aware that larger firms have greater resources to check for security flaws in their systems than smaller businesses do.

Penetration testers, sometimes known as "pen-testers," are a type of ethical hacker who focuses on identifying system flaws and evaluating potential threats.

Methods used by White hackers

While white hat hackers employ the same techniques as their black hat counterparts, they always make sure to obtain the owner's approval beforehand. Instead of using vulnerabilities to transmit malicious code, white hat hackers collaborate with network operators to find and patch vulnerabilities.

Methods and expertise typical of ethical hackers include:

One Example of Social Engineering

Social engineering, or "people hacking," is a frequent tactic used by white hat hackers to probe the "human" side of a network for vulnerabilities. Through the use of deception and subtle manipulation, offenders in the field of social engineering are able to coerce their targets into taking action they otherwise would not (making wire transfers, sharing login credentials, and so on).

Testing for Intrusion

To patch holes in a network's defenses and weak spots in its endpoints, penetration testing is performed.

Thirdly, exploration and discovery

This entails investigating the company to identify potential weak points in its IT and physical infrastructure. The goal is to gather sufficient data to discover legitimate ways to circumvent security measures without causing any harm.

Fourthly, Coding

To divert would-be cybercriminals or to learn more about their methods, white hat hackers set up honeypots as decoys.

Fifthly, by employing a wide range of electronic and conventional resources,

Hardware and gadgets that help penetration testers install bots and other malware in order to break into a system or server are included in this category.

Bug bounty programs are a type of gamification for white hat hackers; they are contests in which participants can win money for discovering and reporting security flaws. Even certifications, conferences, and workshops are available for those interested in ethical hacking.

The online Ethical hacking certification course by WsCube Tech helps you learn all areas of ethical hacking from scratch. You don’t need to have any prior expertise in cybersecurity to learn these skills.

This course covers all the principles (from basic to advanced), including computing networking attacks, enumeration, malware, ransomware, phishing, attack vectors, vulnerabilities, DoS/DDoS attacks, social engineering, footprinting, sniffing, and much more. You will get to work on tools and set up an ethical hacking lab for practice.

Happy Learning!