How do hackers make money?

Being a professional hacker is not only a very interesting job, but it is also very well paid. In addition to having a good salary there are different ways for a good hacker to earn money outside of a normal job, which is very attractive for people who want to have their own hours or do not like to be tied to one site. In this article we are going to review how a good hacker can earn money in different ways.

Why do companies hire professional hackers?

The usual reason companies hire hackers is to perform security tests on their systems. Companies offer training courses and hire hackers to try to break your company’s security systems and try to better understand the effectiveness of your security controls and what they need to change to be more secure. For example, if a company is launching a new web application, it will offer training programs and hire people to try to find vulnerabilities and see what the weaknesses are before releasing the final version of that new application. This way when the app is released, hackers are less likely to be able to find a weakness in the app that affects all users and ultimately costs the company money.

Secondly, sometimes private companies and governments also offer cybersecurity courses and hire hackers to hack information systems of their competition. When it comes to private companies, they have an interest in obtaining information about their competitors’ plans or causing failures in the competitor’s services, so that they are not available and they have no choice but to change their services. This is 100% illegal, and therefore not recommended, but it does happen.

What are the different jobs where you can make a lot of money working as a hacker?

Technical Hacker as an employee: The most basic way to make money hacking computers is to work for a company doing pen testing. This would be a full-time job, where your main job responsibility would be to check the security of the different areas of the company. This is probably the easiest method to earn money, as well as being a good start, as you will be working with more experienced people and learning from them. Once you get some experience, you may have to share it with that environment through a training course in Ethical Hacking.

Freelance Technical Hacker: This job can be done full time or part time. Many companies have what are called bug bounty programs, these are programs in which companies give people permission to hack certain areas of their network, application, web… some examples of companies that use this method are Facebook, Apple or Dropbox. The advantage of this type of work is that it is open to everyone and it is scalable so that you can work as much as you want. The downside is the sheer amount of competition out there; That is why it is a job for a hacker with a medium-high level.

Technical Hacker with part-time contract: The difference between this and a freelance, is that in a contract position you usually work for a client for a very short time, from 6 to 12 months. Many times companies do not want to hire a full time Penetration Analyst, because they need them once or twice a year to test a new product that they are going to launch.

Technical Hacker as Software Developer: This job is suitable for people who have programming experience and like to use scripts and custom software. One way to make money as a hacker is to create software for other people to use and sell. The advantage of this method is that you earn residual income because once you create a tool and keep it up to date, you can resell it to multiple people without having to do any other work.

Technical Hacker as Cybersecurity Consultant: Many hackers quit hacking full time and open their own computer security business. This method has the potential to generate the most profit, but you will need more experience. In addition to cybersecurity, you will need experience in business management and to access many clients you must have consultants with training courses and certificates in the most demanded cybersecurity tools to really demonstrate your level of knowledge, such as CEH (Cestified Ethical Hacking).