How does hacking work

Psychologist Marc Rogers says there are several subgroups of hackers -- newbies , cyberpunks , coders and cyber terrorists.

Newbies are hackers who have access to hacking tools but aren't really aware of how computers and programs work.

Cyberpunks are savvier and are less likely to get caught than a newbie while hacking a system, but they have a tendency to boast about their accomplishments. Coders write the programs other hackers use to infiltrate and navigate computer systems. A cyber terrorist is a professional hacker who infiltrates systems for profit -- he might sabotage a company or raid a corporation's databases for proprietary information [source: Knittel and Soto ].

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These hackers are the typical hoodie-wearing midnight hackers depicted in the media. They operate illegally, and exploit systems for some kind of personal gain. Grey hat hackers operate on the fence. Most of the time, they hack with good intentions, but might not have approached the hack in a totally ethical or legal way. Hacking mostly has a bad connotation—but hacker motives vary across the black, white, and grey spectrum. Here are the most common motives behind hackers.

Hackers are often motivated by obtaining stolen credit card information or selling breached information online. Hacktivism is the use of hacking techniques to leverage political activism. Hacktivists often manipulate sites and networks as a form of protest. This usually looks like a distributed denial of service DDoS attack, which disrupts network access. Anonymous is a famous hacktivist group. Stuxnet is a widely known example of a national security backed hacking strategy.

Stuxnet is a computer worm that attacked Iranian nuclear facilities. The worm is presumed to be a joint effort between American and Israeli intelligence agencies. National cyber hacks tend to be extremely successful, as their teams have the resources and patience to find vulnerabilities and exploit them. As touched on earlier, penetration testers or white hats hack systems to test vulnerabilities to improve security.

Many hackers hack simply because they can. The first category of hacks are never-seen-before vulnerabilities, also known as zero-day vulnerabilities.

They are the most damaging because they are not patched. Security teams do not know how to defend against them, and often don't even realize a system has been compromised. The hackers behind these attacks are highly-skilled, scary-smart hackers. Zero-day attacks are usually carried out on multinational businesses or national security systems. Heartbleed was a zero-day exploit publicized in against Linux servers.

Shockingly, there is no way of knowing how many people knew about and used the exploit before it was made public—and the code that Heartbleed exploited was introduced three years before its vulnerabilities were ever publicized. The majority of present day hacks use code that has been written by someone else and released into the wild. Especially for organizations of any form , it is essential to have a computer network, domain or website, Wide Area Network WAN for a seamless flow of information and business applications.

Consequently, these networks are under a high-risk exposure to the outside world of hacking and hackers. More often than not, the intent of hacking is mostly mala fide i. This is done through stealing of confidential data or embezzlement of funds or other monetary resources , causing business disruptions, spreading of incorrect and malicious rumours, other misleading information which is socially detrimental.

Many a time, hacking is also defined as a form of cyber or internet crime which is punishable by law. However, there is another side to hacking which is done on a professional level by accredited institutions and government law agencies. This is to counter the wrong intentions of the hackers or to prevent any harm being caused to individuals, bodies or associations. It is also undertaken for the safety and protection of the citizens and society at large.

To detail on the above-broached objectives of hacking, it is necessary to know what types of hackers are there in the cyber segment so as to differentiate between the roles and objectives.

Also known as black hat , these types of hackers always have a mala fide intention and they access computer networks, websites in an unauthorized manner. The intent is for personal gain through stealing of confidential organizational data, stealing of funds from online bank accounts, privacy right violations to benefit criminal organizations etc. Also known as white hat, they are recognized and officially stamped hackers who access systems to asses to identify and eliminate suspected weakness.

Other responsibilities include vulnerability assessment, cracking of codes of illegal or anti-social setups , retrieval of crucial data required for security purposes. These are highly trained, certified and paid professionals. They lie between the above-mentioned type of hackers i.

These hackers are those who are focussed on hacking websites and leaving contentious information on such websites. This is to spread political, social, religious messages.