To clarify the legal situation further, ethical hacking certifications and assessments are now available. In Netsparker, for example, it is impossible to scan a site for vulnerabilities without verifying that you have legitimate access to it. So before you launch any vulnerability scan, ensure you are authorized to test the site, application, or system you are targeting. This applies especially to automated scans since tools such as port scanners and vulnerability scanners generate network traffic that could potentially affect regular operations and may be interpreted as an attack attempt. One general rule still holds, though: security testing is not a game, and running unauthorized security tests or gaining unauthorized access on systems you don’t own is usually illegal. Many companies now also run bug bounty programs that invite ethical hackers to freely investigate the security of an organization’s systems within a specified scope.
In theory, the company should then inform the public about such issues once they have been fixed, though this varies widely in practice. Today, many companies follow a policy of responsible disclosure, making it legal for ethical hackers to report any vulnerabilities they may find in company systems on the condition that they don’t disclose this information publicly. Especially in the early days of cybersecurity, this posed a huge problem for ethical hackers, as they could face criminal charges just for reporting that a computer system is unsafe. While this varies depending on the jurisdiction, all unauthorized attempts to probe system security can be considered illegal activity, even if they are made in good faith. Legality has always been a controversial topic for ethical hacking.
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Bounty hunters, on the other hand, are free to choose their own targets and may focus on exploring more profitable vulnerabilities rather than finding everything they can. While bounty hunters are similar to pentesters in that they are authorized to look for entry points into the systems being tested, penetration tests have a strictly defined scope and tend to be more comprehensive. In recent years, the word “hacker” is also used by bug bounty platforms to refer specifically to bounty hunters – ethical hackers who report security vulnerabilities for money. The job of a penetration tester is to find gaps, exploit them like a real attacker would, report vulnerabilities, and recommend countermeasures. Penetration testers are security professionals who are hired to work within the defined scope and time frame of a pentest to identify and exploit as many vulnerabilities as they can, providing a realistic picture of the current security level of the system under test.
Penetration testing is one of many ethical hacking methodologies. Is ethical hacking the same as penetration testing? In the media, you will often hear people using the term “hacker” only in the context of cybercrime. Malicious hackers perform unauthorized security testing to find security gaps and execute cyberattacks for their own benefit and financial gain: to extract sensitive information, compromise user accounts, perform denial of service, or deploy malware such as ransomware or web shells. This is in contrast to black-hat hackers, who apply the hacking mindset with malicious intent. Crucially, white-hats are always authorized to perform security testing (or rather they should be – more on that later). Ethical hackers (also called white-hat hackers) focus on making systems more secure by exposing existing weaknesses before cybercriminals can exploit them. When applied to safely finding and reporting security vulnerabilities so they can be fixed, these skills all make up ethical hacking. Some extend this knowledge to exploiting human nature – the weakest link in any security system – through social engineering techniques. Hackers have a broad understanding of the underlying technologies and processes in information security and instinctively focus on finding security gaps. In cybersecurity, a hacker is someone who enjoys the challenges of exploring, probing, and penetrating computer systems.
Let’s start with a reminder that (despite common usage) “hacker” is a neutral term, not a negative one.