Many beginners get fascinated by the word HACKING ,but do we know what is behind this “Mysterious” word?
The first image formed on thinking about this “Mysterious” word is of “A man with a black hood, typing commands with an evil smile.” Have you ever wondered why this “Mysterious” word is interpreted like this? The simple reason behind this is that Movies have picturized this “Mysterious” word in this manner. Beginners believe HACKERS are MAGICIANS . But this is not the reality. HACKING is a field just like any other field. Like a company needs Cost Accountants, Lawyers, Software Engineers etc.,in the same way it needs security researchers or in your language “A HACKER” .
So, basically “A HACKER” is a security researcher who finds weakness in a device and explores methods to rectify it. In simple words, HACKER is like a doctor of machines. Like a doctor detects disease in a human body by carrying out some tests,a HACKER too tries to identify any weakness in a device by carrying out some tests over it.
Hacking is not only about coding . Ample of things are involved in carrying out a security research. Like a Doctor should know about its patients ,a Hacker should be familiar with its victims.
You might be familiar with this proverb “The more time you spend sharpening your axe, the lesser time you will take to cut down the trees”. Don’t believe any tool, command or anyone that commits “Yeah! Give me $100 and I will hack any account.” Hacking is not just about breaking down into stranger’s social accounts illegally. Being a security researcher involves a lot of hard-work and knowledge. There are lot of websites out there that have collected a huge amount of money by providing hacking credentials of their users. Don’t get into this bullshit.
Now Let us learn about “HACKING” in detail!
The first and the most important step in the hacking is the Information Gathering. Either you are a beginner or you are a professional, you need to gather information about your target in order to treat your patient properly. Just as every finger in your hand is not same, similarly your every victim is not the same. Sometimes you might need to setup a huge platform to catch your victim and sometimes random guesses are sufficient to fulfill the first step. A clever thief first find out all the activities of his victim to attack its house. So you must carry out the first step very patiently. The next step is Scanning. In this step, you find the weakness of your target. If you carried out the first step properly , then it becomes easy for you to know the weakness of your target so that you can use that weakness as your tool to enter into your victim’s device. In tech words, it is finding a suitable vulnerability to launch your payload. A clever thief spends time to find out the easiest way to get into the house . The next step is Launching payload and getting the access, where your technical skills come into play. This step is technical and for this one need to have sound knowledge about systems. After finding vulnerability, you need to get a suitable exploit or a suitable payload to take the full advantage of the system. Like after entering into the house, the thief either destroys the whole resource or install some spying instrument into the house,we need to do the same. The next step is nothing but Maintaining the access.
With all these steps involved, Do you ever think a person who does not know about its target, is able to hack? Obviously not.
The word hacking is misinterpreted in your society. So from today either forget that any word like “HACKER” exists or started viewing this word as a “Security Researcher”!
