Hacking or computer hacking, is a term that started out as a definition for a person, who helps other people with setting up their computers.
While surprisingly the term is still around, it is not used that widely anymore to specify someone that is proficient in computers, rather, the hacking is broken down to multiple “hats” of different colors.
Let’s take a look at black and white hat hackers.
Black hat hackers
Black hat hackers are known as the bad guys, those are the people that will develop the next scam, or participate in a big scam that is already established. They only do hacking to gain quick and big profits. They are incredibly proficient, and that’s how they develop different tactics to deceive users into doing something, and even breach highly secured systems.
White hat hackers
On the contrary, white hat hackers are good, and in their intentions are to developer better systems, programs, and fix vulnerabilities, in order for the people to be protected. They find bugs in products and report them to the companies that develop the product, while they’re not part of those companies, most of the companies give the hackers a reward for reporting the vulnerability and not using it against the company or their users. They are highly sought out for, simply because they understand that it’s more important to create something amazing and move technology forward rather than get quick personal gains.
Attack surface
In the early days, computers were mainly affected by spreading hand to hand malware. For example, hackers crack games and software, but before releasing it, they put malware inside of it and release it to the public. If computers don’t have external access to the internet or a network, then it’s impossible for malware to appear inside of it.
Interesting fact – Malware is always user initiated, the user always must download and run the program himself before the malware can do anything, making it a really preventable problem.
Prevention
The easiest way to prevent yourself from getting hacked by malware is to not run it. Most viruses spread from downloading programs from shady websites, which have a lot of “Download” buttons on the page where you want to download the program from, but those buttons might not correspond to the software you wish to use. Even worse, you could click on download, and the website can give you another program, or more commonly, an installer, which will package with multiple programs which you might not want, but are checked on by default.
Only install software from the vendors offering that software, for example, for smart phones, there is dedicated stores from which you can get your programs. On major operating system there are also such stores from which you can acquire all of your software.
