ust as in sports or warfare, knowledge of the skills and techniques of your opponent is vital to your success.

Just as in sports or warfare,
knowledge of the skills
and techniques of your opponent
is vital to your success.

Movies, the work that ethical hackers do demands a lot

of time and persistence. This is a critical trait, since

criminal hackers are known to be extremely patient

and willing to monitor systems for days or weeks

while waiting for an opportunity. A typical evaluation

may require several days of tedious work that

is difficult to automate. Some portions of the evaluations

must be done outside of normal working

hours to avoid interfering with production at “live”

targets or to simulate the timing of a real attack.

When they encounter a system with which they are

unfamiliar, ethical hackers will spend the time to

learn about the system and try to find its weaknesses.

Finally, keeping up with the ever-changing world of

computer and network security requires continuous

education and review.

One might observe that the skills we have described

could just as easily belong to a criminal hacker as

to an ethical hacker. Just as in sports or warfare,

knowledge of the skills and techniques of your opponent

is vital to your success. In the computer security

realm, the ethical hacker’s task is the harder

one. With traditional crime anyone can become a

shoplifter, graffiti artist, or a mugger. Their potential

targets are usually easy to identify and tend to

be localized. The local law enforcement agents must

know how the criminals ply their trade and how to

stop them. On the Internet anyone can download

criminal hacker tools and use them to attempt to

break into computers anywhere in the world. Ethical

hackers have to know the techniques of the criminal

hackers, how their activities might be detected,

and how to stop them.