how to hire a pro

DEFINITIONS OF HACKERS AND TIPS ON HIRING ONE 

IT departments and individuals are advised to hire a hacker, regardless of the stigma associated with it.

The word “Hacker” entails a lot more than the criminal activities associated with the word.  So you need to make sure you know well enough about why you need a hacker and the kind of hacker you need, and how to hire the right kind. Hackers usually have their specializations. Therefore, you need to ensure you will hire one that can peculiarly solve your problems, just like chiropractors and dentists and heart surgeons aren’t interchangeable, even though they’re all doctors.

That easily means you have some discerning to do. I have worked with a  Certified Ethical Hacker, Whom we made look at security audits, and also do some intelligence gathering for us.  But when it comes to building a WordPress plugin that checks the Copyscape API, one of the things the article touts as something a hacker can do….? He’d be lost. But that doesn't make him any less good at what he does.

I’m probably closer to what the article means when they say a hacker. I’ve been the guy who roams from project to project, fixing annoying things without saying much, writing scripts to automate repetitive tasks, working without close supervision and not liking close supervision when I had it. I have a fake “Help Wanted” ad from an evil genius in my cubicle, and I want all of my coworkers to think I listen to GWAR. And I’m outspoken.

Hackers aren’t inherently bad like we are made to believe — the word “hacker” doesn’t mean “criminal” or “bad guy.”  Geeks and tech writers often refer to “black hat,” “white hat,” and “grey hat” hackers. These terms have successfully generalized the Hacking profession and its classification.

The definition of the word “hacker” is controversial and could mean more than just someone who compromises computer security or a skilled developer in the free software or open-source movements.

 BLACK-HAT HACKERS

Black-hat hackers, or simply “black hats,” are regarded as the bad egg that the media focus on.  Black-hat hackers violate computer security for personal gain (stealing credit card numbers or harvesting personal data for sale to identity thieves). Amazingly they pull certain stunts that are just for pure maliciousness (such as creating a botnet and using that botnet to perform DDOS attacks against websites they don’t like.)

Black hats fit the widely premeditated idea of hackers being computer criminals that perform illegal activities for personal gain and attacking others.

A black-hat hacker who finds a new, “zero-day” security vulnerability would either sell it to criminals on the black market or use it to compromise computer systems.

You can hardly blame people for their stereotype tag for hackers. Media portrayals of black-hat hackers may be accompanied by silly stock photos like the below one, which is intended as a parody.

GRAY HATS

Very few things in life are clear black-and-white categories. In reality, there’s often a gray area. A gray-hat hacker falls somewhere between a black hat and a white hat. A gray hat doesn’t work for their gain or to cause carnage, but they may technically commit crimes and do arguably unethical things.

For example, a black hat hacker would compromise a computer system without permission, stealing the data inside for their gain or vandalizing the system. A white-hat hacker would ask for permission before testing the system’s security and alert the organization after compromising it. A gray-hat hacker might attempt to compromise a computer system without permission, informing the organization after the fact and allowing them to fix the problem. While the gray-hat hacker didn’t use their access for bad purposes, they compromised a security system without permission, which is illegal.

If a gray-hat hacker discovers a security flaw in a piece of software or on a website, they may disclose the flaw publically instead of privately communicating the fault to the organization and giving them time to fix it. They wouldn’t take advantage of the flaw for their gain — that would be black-hat behavior — but the public disclosure could cause carnage as black-hat hackers tried to take advantage of the flaw before it was fixed.

WHITE HATS

White-hat hackers are quite different from their counterparts. They’re the so-called “ethical hackers,” experts in compromising computer security systems which use their abilities for ethical, and legal purposes rather than unethical, and criminal purposes.

White-hat hackers are in fact promoted by societies like U.S.A  especially to test an organizations’ computer security systems for vulnerabilities. The organization authorizes the white-hat hacker to attempt to compromise their systems. The white-hat hacker uses their knowledge of computer security systems to compromise the organization's systems, just as a black hat hacker would. However, if the white-hat hacker is able to gain access to their systems he educates them on how to better guard against situations like that in the future using their access to steal from the organization or vandalize its systems, This process is known as “penetration testing,” and it’s one example of an activity performed by white-hat hackers which further limits the negative effects of black-hat hackers

A white-hat hacker who finds a security vulnerability would disclose it to the developer, allowing them to patch their product and improve its security before it’s compromised. Various organizations pay “bounties” or award prizes for revealing such discovered vulnerabilities, compensating white-hats for their work.

The purpose of this blog is to hire the right hacker and avoid scams and deceit on all levels; my next post will be about real hackers out there for hire.

Cheers!!