Do viruses, DDoS attacks, or buffer overflows tickle your fancy? If so, you might consider becoming a legal hacker, aka an ethical hacker,"white hat" hacker, or penetration tester.
Businesses and government-related organizations that are serious about their network security hire ethical hackers and penetration testers to help probe and improve their networks, applications, and other computer systems with the ultimate goal of preventing data theft and fraud. You may not get the same adrenaline rush that you might with underground hacking, but you can earn a good and honest living--and not end up facing prison time, as some illegal "black hat" hackers do.
How does the job market look like for ethical hackers? Extremely good! The IT market overall continues to grow despite the current economic turmoil. Research firm Gartner estimates that worldwide enterprise IT spending grew by 5.9 percent between 2009 and 2010, to a total of $2.7 trillion. At the same time, security is becoming a more pressing concern. Gartner expects to see an increase of nearly 40 percent in spending on worldwide security services during the five-year period from 2011 to 2015, eventually surpassing $49.1 billion.
In your first years as an ethical hacker, you'll be in a position to earn anywhere from $50,000 to $100,000 per year, depending on the company that hires you, and on your IT experience and education. With several years of professional experience, you could command $120,000 or more per year, especially if you do your own independent consulting.
You can't just dive into an ethical hacker position, however. Without IT security experience, you won't get very far, even with degrees and certifications. As is true for other IT jobs, employers typically want candidates who have college degrees, but related experience is king. And experience with certifications can typically take the place of some degree requirements.
Becoming a Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH)
As noted earlier, becoming a Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH) involves earning the appropriate credential from the EC-Council after a few years of security-related IT experience. The certification will help you understand security from the mindset of a hacker. You'll learn the common types of exploits, vulnerabilities, and countermeasures.
Qualification for a CEH (a vendor-neutral certification) involves mastering penetration testing, footprinting and reconnaissance, and social engineering. The course of study covers creating Trojan horses, backdoors, viruses, and worms. It also covers denial of service (DoS) attacks, SQL injection, buffer overflow, session hijacking, and system hacking. You'll discover how to hijack Web servers and Web applications. You'll also find out how to scan and sniff networks, crack wireless encryption, and evade IDSs, firewalls, and honeypots.
Through approved EC-Council training partners, you can take a live, five-day onsite or online training course to prepare for the CEH cert. You can generally take live online classes over five consecutive days; onsite courses typically offer the content spread over a couple weeks for locals. In addition, you can take self-paced courses and work with self-study materials (including the CEH Certified Ethical Hacker Study Guide book) with or without the training courses. The EC-Council also offers iLabs, a subscription based-service that allows you to log on to virtualized remote machines to perform exercises.
The EC-Council usually requires that you have at least two years of information-security-related work experience (endorsed by your employer) in addition to passing the exam before it will award you the official CEH certification.
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