Top 7 Ethical Hacking Application for 2022

Though some of you may argue that the world has started positively seeing ethical hackers over the past few years; however, the term still has a negative feeling. They consider the activity illegal, mainly because of the illustration of hackers as either cyberbullies or criminals in popular media.

Ethical hacking is simply a technique performed by larger companies, mainly the tech industry, to safeguard their data. It's something they serve to keep their company and resources safe and sound.

Ethical hackers are nothing but computer security experts who know how to identify vulnerabilities in a target system and make the most of them. They also have deep networking expertise and can easily permeate the system and refine their data.

This article will see the best hacking software leveraged by ethical hackers. While it's impossible to discuss all the tools available in one stretch; therefore, we'll take you through some of the most popular ones.

Top 7 Applications for Ethical Hacking

1. Nessus

Nessus is the globe's most recognized vulnerability scanner developed by Tenable. This application helps professionals detect unpatched services, vulnerable passwords, misconfiguration, and other liable systems. A free tool Nessus is suggested for non-enterprise leverage. An ethical hacker can see critical bugs in any target system.

2. Netsparker

The benefit of Netsparker is that it offers us the potential to mimic a hacker's specific actions. You can leverage this tool to find web API threats like SQL injection or cross-site scripting. Without manual verification, this tool can determine genuine vulnerabilities one after the other; hence your headache of disguising the vulnerabilities as a false positive is gone. Netsparker is also easy to access and is available as both an online service and Windows software.

3. Aircrack-Ng

The benefit that Aircrack-Ng brings to the table is that it provides ethical hackers with a range of tools leveraged for monitoring and evaluating a network. If they find a vulnerable network, they check, monitor, attack, and crack it. This Wi-Fi hacking tool spares no platform and supports 2Free BSD, Solaris, Windows, OpenBSD, Linux, NetBSD, and OS X.

4. Nmap

Network Mapper (Nmap) is a hacking software leveraged for port scanning. No ethical hacker can work without this tool due to its robust scanning and searching potential. The data collected using Nmap is essential for ethical hackers in determining how to strike the target system. This tool enables the professionals to identify services and hosts on the network, developing a network map. Leveraging Nmap can probe computer networks and detect OS. First, the tool was only available for Linux; however, now it's a cross-platform tool and operates on Windows and Mac.

5. Burp Suite

It is a Java-based system that deals with Web Penetration Testing. Burp Suite is an industry-standard suite of tools that information security (InfoSec) leverage. For ethical hackers, this tool enables them to identify vulnerabilities in their target system and confirm if any attack vectors impact web applications. In addition, Burp Suite has the best web application crawler that maps functionality and content efficiently. It also tackles shifts in state, app logins, and volatile content.

6. Acunetix

Between cross-site scripting (XSS attack) and SQL Injection (SQLi), which according to you, is more threatening? The latter sends damaging SQL statements back to the victim user and trade-offs the database server safety behind the app. On the other hand, the former attacks interaction between app and users if it's vulnerable. Acunetix is a protector in both situations - a fully automated software with the potential of identifying and reporting over 5,000 security threats, including variants of XSS and SQLi. Moreover, it supports JavaScript and HTML5 and sequences vulnerabilities according to risk level.

7. Metasploit

It is an open-source penetration testing system written in Ruby. Metasploit confirms security vulnerabilities and develops codes. This code lets any ethical hacker break into their plan to determine security issues and choose which to address first. Individuals who are new to ethical hacking leverage Metasploit to sharpen their skills.

Are these Hacking Software Legal to Use?

The answer is YES; you can use these hacking tools legally; however, under the following conditions:

• Written permission from the organization:

If you've to express written permission from the company, it's legal for you to leverage the hacking tools. This means that the organization probably recruited you as an ethical hacker and is aware of what you're doing. If not, then you are a cybercriminal engaging in criminal activity.

• You are a White Hat hacker:

What separates ethical hackers from criminals is that the former leverage their skills and the software tools to determine security vulnerabilities and threats in computer networks and systems. As a result, you can't exploit any company's security flaws for personal gain.

Now that you got a peek into the ethical hacker field and its different tools, we hope you are more evident on whether to consider making ethical hacking your career. If you're looking to develop a career in this field, check out iCert Global’s  Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH) training program.