What is PenTesting?

[Hero]

Hello dear members of Ethical Hackers
I am wondering what is Pen. Testing? And what is it used for?
Is it black hat or white hat?

Thanks,
Hero

[MasterZuFu]

Pen. Testing (more known as "Penetration Testing") is the act of trying to penetrate a secure network to test and see exactly how secure it really is. It's done to find loopholes, or exploits in a system. It's primarily a white hat term, but really it can be used for anything. It's used to "test" a system's security, what you do with the results is what makes the difference between white hat and black hat.

[Kitt3n]

It is both.

Pen testing means to test a company's, servers or persons network security. It is a lot that comes with it from gathering information by dumpster diving (looking trough the trash) to scanning open ports using for example Nmap and running exploits on the person that hired you.

Normally it is stated in the contract how far you are allowed to go and what techniques you are allowed to use to do that. For more information about it and how it all is done you could follow the CEH-v6 course.

[Hero]

Ohh thanks guys, perhaps you should make a sticky explaining it? Could be useful. Also requesting lock. I PMed you.

[MasterZuFu]

Locked as requested :)