I just began studying for the CEH v5 and finished reading module 1 of the official courseware. As I was doing the exercises at the end of the module, I stumbled upon a question where I had to pause and think for minute. The question that I was referring is question #5: What are the similarities and differences between Ethical Hacking and Penetration Testing? I know that Vulnerability assessment and Pentesting are use interchangeably, however they have their differences. Vulnerability assessment is when you test a target for known vulnerabilities whereas Penetration Testing is use to conduct the actual exploitation based on the information obtained from the former test. But what is Ethical Hacking when compared to Penetration testing? The following is the information I found so far: