3. The Adversary of Cybersecurity: Hackers 65 tasked with either defending or attacking a sandboxed cyber infrastructure. They earn points based on the amount of time that systems and services remain online. In a CTF, the red team is the attackers, and the blue team is the defenders. Some CTFs focus on blue teaming, some focus on red teaming, and in some contests, the competitors defend their systems while attacking their competitors’ systems. 3.3 Conclusion Cybersecurity would not exist without hackers—humans that deliberately attack computer systems. As we saw in this chapter, not all hacking is illegal—there are good hackers, too! We explored the motivations for hacking whether for good or bad and also the fact that hackers differ based on skill level. There are script kiddies and elite hackers and everything in between. We also took a brief look at the hacker profile and hacking culture. We focused on some of the history of hacking and traditions to understand how the world of hacking works. This is important because cybersecurity and hackers are inextricably linked. Many cybersecurity professionals are white hat hackers and share a lot in common with their foes. The most important distinction between them is that hackers engage in illegal behavior because they abuse systems without proper authorization. The more cybersecurity professionals understand hackers, the better they will be able to defend against them. The next chapter explores the TTPs of hackers in more depth.
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