Special Interview of India's Famous White Hat Hacker Rahul Tyagi | Lucideus

Special Interview of India's Famous White Hat Hacker Rahul Tyagi | Lucideus

by Malik korrich ~ mercredi 16 septembre 2015

First of all we would like to say thanks for accepting our request for this interview. Today we will talk with one of the famous, loved and most inspiring information security speaker in India.

In this interview we asked some questions which we think can never be answered in such a good manner.

So lets first know who is Rahul Tyagi.
Rahul is a post-graduate with majors in Computer Science and has conducted to his account, more than a hundred training sessions globally in past 7 years. Being a cyber space researcher himself, rahul can claim to have found critical vulnerabilities on websites of VMware, Intel, Sony, HP, Discovery Networks, TED and many more. He is also listed in BlackBerry Hall of Fame for his contributions to the organization. A Published Author of two books - Hacking Crux 1 & 2 - both on information security. He has been covered extensively by the global media and is one of the most followed Indian Information Security Expert on various social media platforms.



MeetHackers : So, when did you decided to become a hacker and how did it all start?

Rahul Tyagi : Well i never decided to become hacker, and i appeal to every reader never try to become a hacker. Not this answer may be shocking to you , but we must understand first what do you mean by a hacker. Hacker is a person who knows the technology in depth and hence once you know all about any device, technology or a computer science term then only you will be able to see the flaws and people who discover and exploit those flaws are known as hacker. So be a good computer science students first then think to become a hacker.


MeetHackers: How old were you when you started learning hacking?
Rahul: Don't remember the age but professional life starts in 2008 after entering Lovely Professional University.

MeetHackers: There are so many hacking crews in the world and one of the famous hackers’ group is "Sea" which is currently offline any comments?

Rahul Tyagi: See the problem in India is that we are busy in reading what is hacked, who hacked and when hacked, we must change this attitude , attitude should be how it can be secured and we have to secure. So i don't really have time to know which crew is down or up, but on the other hand i have huge regards and respect towards all crews which initiate operations for the sake of goodness.

MeetHackers: Which hacking group do you like the most?

Rahul Tyagi : There are many hacking crews in the world but i am not the person who know much about it with huge regards there are few crews whom i call research groups with i am attached and one of the best group is garage4hackers. Instead of hacking into this and that they share pure knowledge which is actually far away from nonsense hacking and actually helping young generation to learn and research towards genuine information security.

MeetHackers: Are these hacking crews have enough skills to breach the security?

Rahul Tyagi : See breaching is not a big deal these days at least, i want that people should understand this , if a person finds a ZERO day whatever the security you have deployed they will hack you. Hence yes hardcore skills and mastery in your field is required but that does not mean we should stop doing any security  countermeasure ,  we must give 100% effort to secure things around cyber space.  

MeetHackers: Do you support Black Hat hacking?

Rahul Tyagi : Ha ha, i don't support black hat, grey hat or white hat hacking, i support healthy hacking which  means any hacking attempt which secure the society somehow i support that, no matters with respect to which country but if any hacker who try his level best to secure his nation's cyber security either from Pakistan , India or any other country.

We should respect this, but security does not mean you will be defacing innocent citizens websites without any reason, idea should be creating secure cyber space and i hope all will be agree on this part.Now i know what you want to ask me so the answer is Big NO, i don't support black hat hacking.

MeetHackers: Several people have queries about how to become a hacker. Can you tell them how could they start?

Rahul Tyagi :There are 4 things only to become a hacker, JUST 4 simple things and time it will take minimum one year.

1. PHP: Learn PHP in depth (Or any language in which ur comfortable)

2. SQL : Learn SQL because understanding backend is the most important thing to understand how things are saved.

3. Linux : Without Linux you are like a body without a soul. Linux any distribution (Ubuntu) good to start with. 

4. Assembly   : You must understand at least the basics of assembly required in standalone application testing aka software testing. 


MeetHackers: Is Indian cyberspace secure enough? If not then please suggest how can it be more secure?

Rahul Tyagi :See when we say Indian Cyberspace then we are talking about Private Organizations, Govt. Agencies, personal websites and knowledge sharing online points like your website. So if i ask you is your website is hacking proof? Your answer will be yes and no both. :) That means there is no meter to measure is our cyber space secure enough. But yes within my  experience capacity as now we have done a long range of VAPT projects for the corporate website security and govt website .

We found that security is there but not up to date. For example Windows is installed but automatic updated for security patches are off. These are very small things which we should correct and with these small things we can create a big impact. So the bottom line is that we have the top most resources which a secure nation needs but the problem is with the people , they think deploying firewall on the website will save them , but they must understand we have to change the security of the firewall with respect to our organizations attack vector instead of running it as default.So we must give proper training and aware as much as we can to minimize such kind of mistakes.

MeetHackers: Last thoughts which you want to share with our readers.


Rahul Tyagi: In India there are having over 1.25 billion people and out of them millions of so called hackers. Now we all must understand learning hacking hacking and hacking and hacking.... so on will not lead us anywhere. If we are aiming to become actually digital India , we must also know how to make it secure too.

Instead of learning and searching for hacking this and that you must learn how to protect too, and from last 7 years me and my organization(Lucideus) trying our level best to aware students, corporate and other Govt. departments about cyber security, so that together we can build not only Digital India but a Secure Digital India.

If truly we want to make India a Secure Digital India a hardcore information security experience has to happen to every person and IT IS POSSIBLE. #JaiHind

                                         Talk To Rahul Tyagi : Facebook , Twitter

MeetHackers: Thank You So Much for such a wonderful interview hope our readers will learn from this and make the best use of information security in their life.

Note: Dear Readers we hope after reading this interview , you want to share your thoughts please feel free to comment below.   Also do share this interview to support and help other students who want to be a white hat hacker like Mr. Rahul Tyagi

Thanks