Terms and Definitions
Many people misunderstand hacking, cracking, white hat, black hat or other terms that security professionals use. So that we’re on the same foot I’m going to list several phrases and terms that get used.
- White Hat Hacker - A computer professional that is ethical and law-abiding.
- Black Hat Hacker - Someone who compromises the security of a system without permission from an authorized party with the intent of defeating security systems and gaining access to restricted areas
- Hacking - Unauthorized use, or attempts to circumvent or bypass the security mechanisms of an information system or network
- Cracking - The act of breaking into a computer system (see Hacking) to do harm
- Vulnerability - Hardware or software that leaves a network system open for possible exploitation. This weakness may be caused by weak security procedures, administrative controls, physical access or other controls
- FOSS - Free Open Source Software also known as OSS
- Fuzzing (Fuzz Testing) - A software technique used to discovery vulnerabilities in applications by sending random or unexpected data as input
- Script-Kiddie - Someone not skilled in hacking who uses freely available tools in an automated fashion without any technical know-how
- pwnd! - Hopefully something that doesn’t happen to this blog! Pwnd is analogous to ‘owned’ meaning to being beaten or dominated by an opponent.
Network Security Professionals Professing Network Security!