As a business person or freelancer, you probably like to stay on the right side of the law. Hacking can be a complicated thing, depending on the circumstances and law of the country you are operating in. Hacking can also be very simple if you know what parts to do and when. That’s where a hacker comes in. They are the ones who put in the hard work. They are the ones who know where to break in.
If your website has been hacked, a hacker (or more than one) will come and clean it for you. If your website is not hacked then you can hire one to build you one. Even if your website does get hacked, hiring a hacker will get rid of any nasties which have been made within the code. I have seen a lot. Thankfully, not a lot that I have seen were serious though. The main reason one would want to hire a Hacker is to protect themselves. You never know, with the introduction of AI, Machine Learning, XSS, and SQLi you may not even know your website has been hacked. The last thing you want is to be the guy who hacks into the system which is used to auto-generate quotes. I mean, that’s the worst!
What are the things that should be considered when hiring a Hacker?
Competency
You need to make sure that the Hacker you hire is competent. You wouldn’t want someone who was too clueless to do the job, let alone have prior experience of hacking.
Security
Security is an important factor. The Hacker you hire needs to know the importance of security. The industry and the hacker go hand in hand. You want someone who can break the rules without breaking the code.
Legality
A hacker, just like any employee, should obey the laws of the country they operate in. Whether this is in terms of working hours or in terms of showing only certain portions of their work to the public, it is up to you, the business owner, to make sure that the Hacker you hire is behaving legally.
Longevity
Time and time again we hear of large scale hacks into websites. These are usually done on government websites or on company websites that have been hacked before. The organizations often secure their websites again but these hacks take many months to fix.
What businesses use hackers?
Just about every type of business which relies on its website for sales can benefit from hiring a Hacker. In most cases, it is even not about the website, it is about the databases which your website uses. If you have an app, then you need to ensure that your databases and logins are protected. A lot of large companies have employed large teams of hackers who are dedicated to finding these weak spots in security.
You can imagine the value of the data which may be stored on a hacked database. The most common ways for hackers to access databases is:
Reverse Engineering
They break your code and then just change the passwords to gain access to the data. This is pretty straightforward as there are a lot of good tutorials out there on YouTube.
Using SQL Injection
With SQL Injection, the hacker just enters in codes into the database which are random, for example:
=1
The hacker will then get the value ‘1’ from your query.
SQL Injection is only a problem if your database contains any kind of sensitive information. It is however important to learn how to prevent SQL Injection.
XSS (Cross Site Scripting)
A hacker can exploit your website if they know how to. They can set up a file which can then allow any web users to view any files within the website. Again, the best way to prevent this is to prevent any users from entering data on the website itself.
Hard Coding
Your Hacker could just hard code whatever they want into the database. They will then be able to do whatever they like with it. This is the last option you want to try as this means that hackers will be able to add whatever they want into a database without your permission.
How to hire a hacker
There are people out there who will advertise themselves as hackers. These, unfortunately, are usually the people who break into websites and break them. They may not be able to fix the website for you but they will, obviously, make a pretty penny. It is usually best to use someone mentioned on our homepage just to be safe.