Sitting in Chennai a group of ethical hackers is safeguarding servers and systems across the world.
Vinod Senthil and his team at InfySec have been up for the past 24 hours watching the Peyta ransomware outbreak. With panic calls from clients with questions on systems shutting down and data recovery expected, they will have their hands full for the next few days. But this is usual business for professionals like Senthil who act as watchdogs of the Internet and cyber space.
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Peyta, currently affecting systems in India, Denmark, The Netherlands, Spain, the UK and Ukraine, has struck a few weeks after the WannaCry attack."We have a close network of security experts and we alert one another when there is a threat. WannaCry has made companies serious about cyber security. While none of our clients have been affected, news of a ransomware attack spreads fear," said Karthick Vigneshwar, director, Infysec.
But ethical hackers say their work is not taken seriously by corporates. A week before Zomato's database was hacked, InfySEC accessed user information in Zomato's database as part of the bug bounty programme. "We got user names, email ids, addresses, history of transactions. We informed Zomato but did not hear from them," said Vigneshwar.
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With the tools and knowledge to hack a network, website or programme, white hat hackers use their skills to aid corporates in strengthening cyber security. However, they are often misjudged. "Their work is frowned upon because people worry that vulnerabilities in their systems will be made public or data the ethical hacker gets might be put up on the dark web," said Vivek Rajaraman, part of the cyber security team of an IT giant.
While many take up ethical hacking as a part-time job, there are others like Gopinath Kandasamy who was driven by passion. A Java developer with a leading IT company , Kandasamy spends 10 to 12 hours a week participating in several bug bounty programmes. "Since I am a developer, I can learn about my mistakes besides identifying vulnerabilities in systems when I participate in these programmes," said Kandasamy .For Manoj Jayakumar, challenge and financial reward drew him to ethical hacking. "Finding a bug is a challenge and if I get paid, I can't ask for more," said Jayakumar who was able to repay his education loan through rewards he earned from such programmess.
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But ethical hacking and warding off cyber threats are not performed at the click of a mouse. "One must invest time and hard work. Every bug will not be recognised and rewarded. Your finding has to be unique and well documented.Companies consider the criticality of the discovery and rank you accordingly," said Rajaraman.
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