Hello to everyone in this forum,
Before asking this question in this forum i searched this and could not found the answer. So asking it here.

I want to be An Ethical Hacker. I know some php and mysql and i do freelance as a webdeveloper and i just want to learn how to hack websites only for security reasons.

Please help me...

Before asking this question in this forum i searched this and could not found the answer.

Have you ever considered that there could be a reason that you couldn't find an answer for how to be an "Ethical Hacker"? Information isn't good or bad, it just is. If you're avoiding certain sites because of some pop culture reputation then that's the reason you're not getting anywhere.

Also, most people drop the romanticised good guy vs. bad guy crap pretty early on. If you meet someone who claims to wear a colored hat, any color at all, they are probably a poser or else they just think you're an idiot and they're poking fun at your naivety. Now that's not to say that things like the Black Hat convention are a joke, they are extremely informative. But the name is something of a tongue in cheek reference; no one actually identifies themselves with those labels. This is because those imaginary boundaries that would have to exist for those names to mean anything are counterproductive to the objective of learning the trade.

It sounds to me like you're already in the industry. In that case, you know those "Best Practices" things that people are always yammering about? Start there.

Well, let's be fair to OP. Someone who intentionally interferes with a computer system for the purposes of causing disruption, damage, or any other negative effects for its operators or users can be unequivocally called a "black hat". While someone who does penetration testing, or who searches for vulnerabilities in software to report them, can also be unequivocally called a "white hat".
I don't think any imaginary boundaries are drawn by these definitions.

I can see where you're coming from if you feel compelled to categorize people based on their profession. But a person's actions are performed based on the situation at hand and their own best interest. Take myself for instance, I'm a Systems Administrator, so security is baked into my job description and based on that you could call me a "White Hat" professionally speaking. This doesn't mean that I haven't been an absolute prick in the past or that I have any reservations of doing so again in the future. You could then say "Grey Hat" but at that point I feel like people are making up terms just because their clean cut definitions don't work like they expect them to.

Here's another example; a friend of mine, a good guy in every respect, recently accepted a contract to set up and secure an Email server. Simple enough right? After he signs the contract and arrives on site he finds out that his client is setting up one of those "pay to spam" Email servers. Whatever his moral feelings about his situation now are, they don't matter. He is a professional and he has already accepted the contract so he is going to see it through to the end. He's not writing any payloads, compiling any target lists or even so much as correcting any grammar on the Email. He is simply enabling the process. How would you classify my friend? No wait, let me guess. "Grey Hat" again, am I right?

This doesn't mean that I haven't been an absolute prick in the past or that I have any reservations of doing so again in the future.

This is true. The terms, as I have defined them above, say nothing about your future or past activities, only current. In the same sense, someone can say they're a baker even though if you go far enough into their past or future you'll find that at some point they were not regularly baking anything for a living.
I will acknowledge that someone could exploit vulnerabilities for system A on even days and report them for system B on odd days. Feel free to call such a person whatever you like, since my definitions above do not cover such a case. I will arbitrarily choose to call them a black hat.

Where are you going with this? My argument was that there are people who can be unequivocally called either "black hats" or "white hats", and your counterargument is that there are people who can't? Does the existence of tuxedo cats disprove the existence of completely white cats and completely black cats?

@Computergeek01 & @helios :
I'm extremely sorry if it hurts you but ....
Thanks a lot for taking your time to answer my question but isn't it a confusional answer. You both are giving explanations and so on but not telling that from where to start like learning which programming language would be helpful for securing websites / web application and yes ofcourse what is the normal payment for an ethical hacker provided by any company.

Again i was not asking the differentiation between white hat, black and gray hat hacker...[i didnt want say like that to you my seniors but it was the situation]

I'M EXTREMELY SORRY IF MY WORDS HURT YOU :(

and still waiting for your support guys...

helios wrote:
Where are you going with this?

I guess I'm just ranting, sorry about that. I think it's the connotation that the title brings up, like a person might better understand an idea because they lay claim some unquantifiable title. The stuff you need to know is the same no matter how you choose to use it, after all in order to defend a network you have to know what you're defending against and vica versa. So there's no actual division when it comes to how you go about learning things.

This is actually an inspired question because now that I think about it I have an issue with the kinds of people that describe themselves using these terms. It wasn't that long ago that I remember reading entire message boards of self-proclaimed "experts" pooping in their pants because "Oh No! Security is lost! Row-hammer is going to doom us all!!!!". And I'm there thinking to myself "Are you kidding me? Is there something huge that I'm missing, or did I just fall into the twilight zone?". These were people who are supposedly working in the same field as me, with the same qualifications and expertise. That's not the only time either, you know as well as I do that stuff like this comes up every couple of months. Everytime I see stuff like that I want to distance myself from them more and more.

tl;dr: Today I learned that I have a problem with labels.

and still waiting for your support guys...

Start with a book like Penetration Testing: A Hands-On Introduction to Hacking by Georgia Weidman and don't worry about what you call yourself, what you do is what matters.

@Grey Wolf: Thanks a lot for replying to me.
I can understand that to be an " Ethical Hacker " isnt something like joining and completing a graphic designing course. Its more on personal creativity [i think so]. Its something special.
well...
Can you tell me that what should i learn just to be " Web Application Security Researcher/hacker " I just want to be specialist in it Not All Rounder.

I hope you understand what i mean!!!
Please help me

Once again Thanks a lot for taking your precious time and answered me.

I can't really say what you should learn for web app security, I have not had the time to learn the stuff I'm interested in properly so I wouldn't want to possibly misguide you. The reason I suggest starting with a book is that you will get to know the sort of things to search for and ask about.

It may also be worth taking a look at the forums of hak.5
https://forums.hak5.org

@Grey Wolf: Thanks a lot for all your help. I just got the book and starting to read the book. looks nice.

My last question for today is - for the help, should i create a separate post for my problem or should i message you in this forum.

Once again Thanks a lot for all your precious help :)

If you have questions I would suggest starting a new thread in the Lounge each topic. You my not, however, get an answer. There is sometimes animosity towards 'hacking' here or the threads go wandering all over the place but not towards an answer.

Mr Grey Wolf : Can this pen testing be done in windows or just lunix?

I think most of the pentesters I've talked to use Kali because nearly everything they need comes in one distribution. Most, that have said anything about it, have it on a USB stick and just book from that when they need it.

That is not to say you can't do it with Windows, but you might have to do a bit of hunting for ports of the tools you want to use.

@designerscoders:

Regardless of any discussion about "White Hat" and "Black Hat" labels, I just want to applaud you for wanting to behave ethically, and not wanting to use technical security skills for malicious or disruptive aims. There's a lot of cynicism in the world, and a lot of people who'll try and tell you that it doesn't matter how you choose to behave, or how what you do affects other people. It's good to see that there's someone who actually wants to behave responsibly and ethically :)

It's a shame the intent of what you were saying got lost behind an argument about labels.

Sorry about the derail OP, my ADD was acting up I guess. As a way of making amends check out this tool for simple pen testing: http://www.fastandeasyhacking.com/ . It may seem a little fishy given the URL and the embarassing cyber-furry mascot, but it's a pretty easy to use and portable front end for Metasploit.

My focus is on system\network penetration more so than web front ends but if you find yourself interested look at Nmap and Aircrack. They are both cross-platform

- Nmap: https://nmap.org/download.html <- Port Scanner
- Aircrack: http://www.aircrack-ng.org/ <- Wireless password decryptor


You'll hear people talk about WireShark and Snort as well and they aren't wrong. But those are deep packet inspectors which are more appropriate for passive network monitoring and are almost impossible for a beginner to use.

WireShark isn't hard to use, you just have to have basic understanding of networking (which if OP doesn't have, then this is going nowhere anyways). You can learn quite a bit from a well placed WireShark.

IMO you need to be able to write a meaningful filter in Wireshark to glean anything useful and avoid being inundated with data. The syntax that Wireshark uses has a noticeable learning curve for a beginner. In addition to, as you alluded to, knowing what to filter for. Those two considerations together are why I see more beginners become discouraged by WireShark than any other reasons.

It's also pretty trivial to write a simple sniffer in something like Python or Ruby if you're more familiar with that, albeit Wireshark will be much more powerful initially.

The filter syntax in wireshark is a little odd. I never found it to be quite as intuitive as I'd like, but it's easy enough to look up so long as you know what you need.