Web Application Hacking - Boon or Bane?

The ever-deteriorating situation of the world has forced everyone to escalate the layout of usage. All the traditional modes of tasks are now taken care of through the digital aspect. While the internet is playing the most crucial role in everyday lives, it has brought upon many thundering clouds in the sky. With the potent chances of being hacked via technology and losing everything rising more and more, no one can afford to sit still with hands closed and let it happen.

Everything that we do on the internet is through a digital web that has its strings spread across everything. A web browser, a web site, a web application, a web server, you name it, you have it. Out of everything, let's keep our eyes out for one specific node, which would be a web application.

Every task by every user can take place with the help of a use worthy interface we call a Graphical User Interface (GUI). A GUI could be of anything, from typical desktop applications to games that can run on a computer. Although we call them desktop applications, there's still a slight difference when we walk over the aspects of the internet. When it comes to browsing or surfing the internet, we view and go over a web application. An online form that needs information, a page to view data, an online image editor, etc., everything that embeds within a web browser, regardless of the purpose, is a web application.

Now let's change the perspective to that of a hacker and think from their view. For me, a web application is a source of information that binds me to the internet. Every skill that I possess can help me hack into a web application and gain whatever I desire. I can take control of an application and, through that, I can take over many computer systems that come across my controlled application. I can sharpen up or level up my skills by trying to hack web applications and harm others. I can inject malware through the web application I control into various systems of all the users of that application. Upon taking control, I can use all the saved information to earn money, to gain popularity, to achieve whatever I desire.

Although this is possible, I will not do that for I am an ethical hacker or also known as a white-hat hacker. I possess skills to hack into systems and keep on leveling them up, but instead of bringing harm to others, I make it my responsibility to keep everything safe. It is me who has to make everything safe that one can be harmed from when surfing the internet. I have to find all the weaknesses or vulnerabilities that exist in a web application and report it to the owners or developers so they can patch it up and prevent hacking. It is upon my shoulders to teach and enlighten up others about the importance and value of web application security.

Let's move towards the technical aspects. Many programs are available that take cybersecurity quite seriously and are continuously looking out for potential experts who could bring remarkable diversity to the cybersecurity community through their knowledge and work. Many organizations, like hackerone, bugdiscover, bugcrowd, etc., provide opportunities to find bugs in many web applications that could help you earn various rewards from upon reporting, which could be money ranging from 100s to 1000s of dollars. This opportunity is known as a bug bounty. Upon concluding, we determine that web application hacking is a two-faced coin that one can benefit from as well.