When you hear the word “hacking”, you typically think of it as something negative. You may think of scammers and stolen information. This is called unethical hacking, which is hacking that’s performed with the intent to steal and/or gain unauthorized access to something. People who unethically hack are also known as black hats.
Hacking can be a good thing though. There are two types, ethical and unethical. Ethical hacking is done with authorization. People who do this type of hacking are called white hats. It’s often used to test the security of organizations. If you want to be a hacker, I would highly recommend being an ethical one. First off, it’s legal, and you can make a good amount of money. If you want to know more about other jobs in web, check out this article.
Salary
Let’s go backwards a little bit. Who knew you could have a legal and stable job as a hacker! According to salary.com, an ethical hacker has an average salary of $106,000. Knowledgehut.com also states that the “Starting pay for an entry-level ethical hacking job salary in the US is $112,000 annually.” Both are above the average US salary. Which, according to Forbes, is $59,428. Now, let’s compare this to an unethical hacker’s salary. The average salary for an unethical hacker is, well, I don’t know. All I know is that it’s illegal.
| Ethical Hacker Average Salary | $106,000 – $112,000 |
| Average US Salary | $59,428 |
| Unethical Hacker Average Salary | ??? |
Similarities in Hacking
Even though ethical and unethical are antonyms, or complete opposites, they share some similarities. To start, they’re both a form of hacking. Both sides are trying to breach some type of security to reach a goal. The difference is the intent. The other similarity is the process to become a hacker. Whether it’s ethical or unethical, it’s still hacking. Therefore the tools, programs, skills, etc. that’s used to hack are shared between ethical and unethical hackers. It’s common knowledge on both sides.
Differences in Hacking
I’ve actually already mentioned some differences, such as the salary and intent, but there are more beyond that. I only briefly mentioned some differences, so now I’m going to go in depth.
Legality
One example of a difference is legality, which I’ve also briefly mentioned. When it comes to legality, there is a huge difference. Ethical hacking is completely legal, while unethical hacking is completely illegal. In addition, you can be punished for it. Depending on how severe, you can get fined or jail time. So, again, I highly recommend going with the ethical route.
Intent
Intent is actually one of the differences that can be debated. Sometimes you can have good intentions for something, but the way you go about it can be unethical. For example, what if a family member couldn’t get into their social media account. They come to you, asking for you to hack into it, so that they can get it back. You have permission to hack their account, so that’s ethical. But, you don’t have permission from the social media platform. Even though you don’t have any malicious intent, it’s unethical because the platform didn’t authorize it.
In general though, the unethical hackers usually have malicious intentions and ethical hackers have benevolent intentions. Unethical hacking is done to break through a network’s security. Ethical hacking is done to improve a network’s security.
Job/Payment
Ethical hackers have the opportunity to have a legal, and stable job that pays well. An unethical hacker’s salary is based on them. That actually sounds great, but it’s not really in a positive way. Like an entrepreneur pays themselves, and that’s great. An unethical hacker steals information and sells it, which is not so great.