Whenever the word hacker strikes your ears your mind will always conjure up a picture of a hoodie wearing computer genius with multiple screens in front of him lit with multiple colours and codes. Much of it is true but it often masks the genius thinking and mindset of hackers behind all their hacking. The exploitation and approach is always first designed in the mind of a hacker and later manifsted inside the target in the form of vulnerabilities and atatcks. In this article we will exlore some techniques to develop a hacker mindset which is often a less lightened topic in the jargon of tips and techniques.

People working in the security industry like penetration testers and bug hunters are all nested under the umbrella term of Hacker/ethical hackers so building a hacker mindset for yourselves and adding it into the arsenal of your methodology can help you improve the security of your target and safeguard it from various malicious attacks. It can diverse you testing and you can come up with most unique and severe testing processes. Psychologically speaking your mindset influences your thinking , feelings, begaviour and actions. So building a hacker mindset is not only a necessity but also a need to ace in this field.

Cultivating such a mindset can be one the important things that can help you to think critically and you can massively succeed in securing the targets unabridged.

Understanding a hackers mindset

In this article we will first understand a hackers mindset beyond his talent, visualization and tech skills. Once understood very well you can inculcate that mindset into your behaviour. But make sure having a hacker mindset might make you insightful but you will always lag behind if you don’t sharpen your skills of programming, networking, scripting etc. Here are a few common traits of hackers:

Pleasure is based on the work they do.

Strive for progress not perfection

A hacker hardly attaches his pleasure to outcomes of his efforts rather he enjoys and loves his own work. In other words hacker is not afraid or outcomes because it is the process that brings him joy. The satisfaction of a successful hack is what keeps them focused on the next challenge (and the next). The thrill of the chase to crack the walls of cybersecurity defense is their ultimate reward.

Creative Thinking

Creativity is seeing what everyone else has seen, and thinking what no one else has thought.

The process of finding vulnerabilities in the system is not just because of the having bold methodologies, and proper technical game structure. But it also takes incredible creativity and ability to think outside the box. Good hackers are very well at thinking outside the box with creativity.

Finding a potential vulnerability in a system can have endless opportunities but at the end it comes down to hacker’s capability to imagine the ideas that will break the defenses.

SYSTEMIZING : Drive to uderstand systems:

It is always easier to destroy a complex system than to selectively alter it ― Roby James

Researchers (yes research was done on hackers as well) found that a unique trait in hackers was to break the codes and they named is systemizing. They drive was not only for breaking codes but to understand the build of complex systems and comprehend the bigger picture.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/06/160601111353.htm

Simply putting hackers aren’t stereotyped with the crux of technology but they possess a drive to know how that works and they possess the ability to build complex systems.

Persistence and patience

Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence

Hackers will try many things that don’t work. They will spend hours on ideas that don’t pan out. They will spend a bunch of time boring over disassembly, stepping through programs, etc. all for a single moment of payoff, which may not even be there. But everytime i heard a story of persistence and patience every time i heard about the fruitful rewards they got at the end.

Ethics

A man without ethics is a wild beast loosed upon this world -Albert Camus.

Ethics are important, not because you have to be ethical to successfully hack stuff, but because hackers without ethics tend to wind up in jail, or working for the government in a way they’d rather not be.

There’s not much more to it than that. Social skills are not really required. Intelligence is helpful, as in anything, but secondary to the other attributes I mentioned.

The mentioned points will give you a condensed perespective of a typical hackers mindset, heir specific traits and mindset. There is surely more to it but these are the fundamentals of a hackers mindset if understood well you can employ them to build a same mindset.

About us

Snapsec is a team of security experts specialized in providing pentesting and other security services to secure your online assets. We have a specialized testing methodology which ensures indepth testing of your business logic and other latest vulnerabilities.

If you are looking for a team which values your security and ensures that you are fully secure against online security threats, feel free to get in touch with us #support@snapsec.co