{"id":1685,"date":"2023-03-08T13:26:23","date_gmt":"2023-03-08T13:26:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ruthware.com\/?p=1685"},"modified":"2024-12-05T12:45:28","modified_gmt":"2024-12-05T12:45:28","slug":"so-whats-a-pen-tester","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ruthware.com\/so-whats-a-pen-tester\/","title":{"rendered":"So What’s a Pen Tester"},"content":{"rendered":"

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what’s a pen tester<\/h1>\n

[\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.16″ background_color=”#223044″ custom_padding=”54px|0|54px|0px|false|false” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_row padding_top_bottom_link_1=”true” padding_left_right_link_1=”true” _builder_version=”4.16″ max_width=”900px” module_alignment=”center” custom_padding=”||100px||false|false” use_custom_width=”on” custom_width_px=”900px” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.16″ custom_padding=”|50px||50px” custom_padding_tablet=”0px|0px|0px|0px|true|true” custom_padding_phone=”” custom_padding_last_edited=”on|desktop” global_colors_info=”{}” padding_tablet=”0px|0px|0px|0px|true|true” padding_last_edited=”on|desktop” custom_padding__hover=”|||” padding_phone=”0px|0px|0px|0px|true|true”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.0″ text_font=”Crimson Text||||||||” text_text_color=”#ff5962″ text_font_size=”23px” header_3_font=”|600|||||||” header_3_text_color=”#fff899″ header_3_font_size=”26px” header_3_line_height=”1.4em” custom_padding_tablet=”0px||0px||true” custom_padding_phone=”” custom_padding_last_edited=”on|phone” global_colors_info=”{}”]<\/p>\n

“So what’s a pen tester?”<\/em><\/strong><\/h3>\n

[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.27.4″ text_font=”||||||||” text_text_color=”#ffffff” header_font=”|700|||||||” header_3_font=”|700|||||||” header_3_text_color=”#fff899″ header_3_font_size=”24px” header_3_line_height=”1.4em” custom_padding_tablet=”0px||0px||true” custom_padding_phone=”” custom_padding_last_edited=”on|phone” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” sticky_enabled=”0″]<\/p>\n

That’s a question I’ve got used to answering a lot over the last year, while writing Zero Days<\/em>, and I’m guessing it’s a question that’s going to come up a fair bit more over the next few weeks and months as I do events and interviews about the book.<\/p>\n

That’s because Jack, my main character in Zero Days, <\/em>is a professional pen tester, and her job becomes a really central part of the plot, and key to the spur-of-the-moment decision she makes, a decision which sets the events of the book in motion.<\/p>\n

I’d already written one book where the main character’s job was an important part of the narrative – Hal, the heroine of The Death of Mrs Westaway, <\/em>is a tarot reader and the skills she’s honed while doing readings for her clients are part of the reason why she’s able convince a family of strangers that she’s a long-lost relative. I loved researching tarot readings and figuring out how her experiences would inform Hal’s character – and when I stumbled over a very different but equally fascinating job – pen testing – I knew it would made a truly intriguing background to a novel. I just had to figure out which one.<\/p>\n

But back to the original question, what is <\/em>pen testing? Well, first up, it’s got nothing to do with pens. It’s actually short for “penetration testing” which is equally unhelpful in terms of explaining what a penetration tester actually does.<\/p>\n

In short, a penetration tester is a paid attacker – someone companies hire to test their security in an adversarial way. That could be their physical security – attempting to break into their buildings or gain access to unauthorised areas. It could be their digital security – trying to access secure databases or hack websites. Often, it’s a combination of both, although pen testers frequently specialise in one or other. But it’s a mistake to think that pen testers are only dealing with buildings and software – often the chink in the armour of a secure database is the same as the same as the chink in the amour of a secure building: the people who are supposed to help keep<\/em> it secure.<\/p>\n

Because although breaking into a building might be as simple as breaking a window, you can bar a window – but what you can’t do is bar the doors to the people who work there. They need access to do their job – so if you can persuade someone that you’re supposed to be there, or convince a genuine employee to open a door, it can be much easier to walk right in. Likewise, hacking a secure database might involve finding a flaw in the software, but it might equally involve tricking an authorised employee into giving up their password or credentials.<\/p>\n

I first stumbled across the idea of pen testers when I was researching One by One<\/em>, a book that’s centred on a tech company developing a social media app. I didn’t need a pen tester for that book, but the more I found out about their jobs, the more I knew one would make a great main character for a thriller. Pen testers, after all, are real life bad-asses, doing borderline illegal stuff for the best possible reason: to help keep the rest of us safe. But they’re also – and this was really important to me – real people, with real limitations. They’re not James Bond or Jason Bourne. They don’t zipwire down lift shafts, or have superhuman endurance, and they can’t actually <\/em>do anything illegal or unethical, or act beyond the remit given to them by the companies they’re investigating. All this means they have to tread a pretty fine line between trying to act like a real hacker, while not doing anything harmful or unethical, and it sometimes means they find themselves in temporary hot water – a situation Jack encounters at the beginning of the book, when she’s mistakenly arrested by the police while pen-testing a company out of hours.<\/p>\n

Researching Zero Days <\/em>gave me a huge respect for pen testers and hackers, and a healthy appreciation of the risks we all take every day when trusting companies with our data.<\/p>\n

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That’s a question I’ve got used to answering a lot over the last year, while writing Zero Days, and I’m guessing it’s a question that’s going to come up a fair bit more over the next few weeks and months as I do events and interviews about the book. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1686,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"on","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"2880","footnotes":""},"categories":[176],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1685","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-zero-days"],"yoast_head":"\nSo What's a Pen Tester -<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/ruthware.com\/so-whats-a-pen-tester\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta 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