Learning Swift For Ethical Hacking Purposes
The programming language Swift was developed by Apple Inc. and first officially launched on 2014. It is a general purpose, compiler programming language intended for its usage on a wide variety of application domain. It has a multi- paradigm feature that attributes it as a protocol oriented, object-oriented, functional, imperative and block structured declarative programming language.
It is an intuitive programming language designed for operating systems like macOS, iOS, tvOS, iOS, iPadOS, Linux, watchOS and z/OS. It is mainly designed for Apple’s native API Cocoa, the development framework Cocoa Touch and the object-oriented C codes used widely for various Apple products. It aims in incorporating various Objective-C code features ensuring much wider security factors, which in turn helps the software testers to identify software bugs more easily.
Learning Swift For Ethical Hacking Purposes
Swift is recognized as a ‘powerful’ and fastest growing programming language in the history of technology.
The popularity of this language among techies has come from the ‘intuitive’ part which makes Swift an easy to learn and easy to use programming language, even for non-programmers and with minimum technical know-how.
The developers find Swift coding to be interactive and fun due to its lucid application of simpler syntaxes that are compact yet demonstrative. New programmers find it friendly and easy to adopt.
Swift language is incorporated with modern features that are equally welcoming for the developers and end users using the final product. It is designed in a ‘safe’ format and it is also known to develop softwares that has unmatched operational speed. Whether it is for phone, desktop, servers or any other machine running codes, Swift is a perfect solution for developing APIs for every platform. This is why it is very commonly used in mobile app development. This also makes Swift very good to know for ethical hacking purposes.
There are many well known bug bounty programs offered for large mobile app companies. In fact a popular casual dating app called Meetnfk gave two programmers a reward of $250,000 USD for discovering and exploit and implementing a fix to their Swift coding. Adult apps tend to offer large rewards due to them often being targeted for security and data breaches.
Key Features Supported By Swift Coding
Swift is closure supportive.
In Objective-C using of some core strings required method calls, which in Swift has been incorporated in the core language making it easily accessible.
Five levels of access control are supported by the Swift. The levels are open, public, internal, private and fileprivate.
An important inclusion in Swift is the usage of option types and using a new keyword ‘guard’ to protect the chaining process.
Swift allows the usage of objects that has got pass-by-value semantics making it a feature that provides flexibility to the programmers.
Protocols or more commonly known as interfaces are used in Swift, making it a protocol-oriented programming.
Easier memory allocation and deallocation with the incorporation of Automatic Reference Counting or ARC memory management.
Efficient debugging on the development environment for the usage of read-eval-print loop or REPL. The REPL adoption with the Swift playgrounds, has made debugging interactive and hence much easier by responding well with run time debugger changes and codes.
High performance with safety assurance.
Swift is said to have produced some ground-breaking results combining the best of Apple’s engineering think-tanks and the wide open source of contributors.
What Is Hacking?
Hacking is referred to as the activities which actually seek to compromise all kinds of digital devices. It can be tablets, smartphones, and computers or it can even be an entire network. Hacking need not be connected to malicious purpose in all cases. Hackers need not be cyber criminals but in most the cases they are and what is the reason hacking has been connected with malicious activities. Hacking can be connected to fun or some kind of challenge, it can be for spying, information gathering, protest, or in some cases it can be for financial gain.
Hackers
The majority of the people think that hackers are nothing but a rogue programmer or a self-taught whiz kid who is very good at programming skills and they can easily modify computer software and hardware. But, this is definitely a narrow view. There can be plenty of reasons behind hacking and hackers are of different types than just a skilled programmer. For a person turning into hacking, there can be plenty of reasons.
But one thing is true hacking is always technical in nature. But it is possible that hackers make use of their psychological skills to attack a user. Tricking can be done by offering some personal data or some kind of malicious attachment. Social engineering is the term used for such kind of tactics.
Hacking Techniques
Hacking is nothing but an over-arching umbrella that includes a number of tactics and activities. Malvertizing and social engineering are two of the main techniques used in hacking. Other than these, there are many other hacking techniques. Some of them are:
Worms
Viruses
Trojans
Rootkits
Ransomeware
Denial of service
Botnets
Types of Hackers or Hacking
There are mainly four reasons behind hacking and hackers attempt to hack computers mostly for these reasons.
The first reason is with some financial gain. Hackers try to hack some information just because they need money from credit or debit cards. Hacking can also happen by defrauding the banking systems.
Hacking can also happen for some reasons like burnishing someone’s reputation. Hackers can do it in many ways and one among them is, leaving something unusual on the website.
Thirdly, being corporate espionage. Competitors can hack information about some companies and use them for their growth.
The fourth reason can be for stealing national or business intelligence. This can be sponsored in many cases and in most the cases it is for good reasons.
Along with these, there is one more category of cybercriminals. These hackers are motivated for some reason like it can be political or social. They are called hacktivists. Through unflattering attention, they want to gain public attention and for that reason, they perform hacking activities.
Mainly there are two types of hackers. One is white hat hackers and the other is gray hat hackers. White hackers are meant to improve the security system by finding and preventing possible threats. But gray hackers utilize their skills and break the systems and this happens without permission.
SEE ALSO : What Is Ethical Hacking And How Does It Work?
Hope this post on Learning Swift For Ethical Hacking Purposes is helpful?