Authorised offensive security

Hire a hacker the legal way, on a fixed price

Apex Offensive is where you hire a hacker for authorised penetration tests and red team engagements. You hire a hacker under a signed scope, you agree the fee before we start, and testing begins within 48 hours of authorisation.

Get a fixed quote See what it costs

Fixed fee, never hourly. Minimum engagement $25,000. Boston and London.

Day 0Scope briefWe map the target, the threat, and the constraints in writing.

Day 1Fixed quoteOne price for the agreed scope. No hourly billing and no change orders.

Day 2Authorisation signedScope, dates and rules of engagement, signed by the system owner.

Day 10Report and debriefFindings, proof, and remediation, walked through by the tester.

Apex Offensive test bench, where clients hire a hacker for authorised security work — Authorised testing · signed scope in force

The legal basis

How to hire a hacker without breaking the law

When you hire a hacker, one thing separates a penetration test from a criminal offence, and that is written authorisation from the system owner. Therefore we build every engagement on three documents, and we will not start without them.

Document 01

Scope of work

Exactly which systems are in and out of scope, in writing. When you hire a hacker here, anything outside that list stays untouched, although it may look interesting.

Document 02

Written authorisation

Signed by the person who owns the systems. Because cloud and hosting providers often need to approve as well, we confirm that before day one.

Document 03

Rules of engagement

Permitted techniques, testing windows, escalation contacts, and evidence handling. In short, the boundaries everyone agrees to in advance.

Fixed pricing

What it costs to hire a hacker

Most firms hide what it costs to hire a hacker behind a contact form, so here it is. These are the three shapes an engagement usually takes, with the fee band each one lands in. Therefore we confirm one fixed number after the scoping brief.

Red team

$95,000 and above

Objective-driven simulation against a defended estate. Six weeks or more.

Full-scope adversary simulation
Detection and response measured
Purple team replay with your defenders

Scope this

Full assessment

$45,000 to $90,000

Internal and external infrastructure, cloud, and applications. Three to five weeks.

Everything in the focused test
Network, cloud roles, and segmentation
Chained findings with proven impact

Scope this

Focused test

$25,000 to $40,000

One application or a small external estate. Roughly two weeks.

Manual testing to OWASP depth
Business logic and authentication
Report, debrief, and one retest

Scope this

Those are honest ranges for what it costs to hire a hacker, not a menu. The final number is fixed after the scoping brief, so it never moves during the project. Moreover, a full engagement is not the only way to hire a hacker here, because the bounded review below is a different piece of work rather than a discounted one.

The smallest way to hire a hacker

from $4,500 Second door

The Focused Exposure Review is a bounded review of what you expose to the internet. We map your public estate, test it, and verify every finding by hand rather than sending you a scanner export. Scope is fixed at up to five external hosts and one public web application. Your report then arrives within five business days.

Suited to

An enterprise customer, an insurer or an investor has asked for evidence of testing, and you have a date to meet.
Nothing external has ever been tested, so you first need to know what is actually reachable.
You would rather see how we work on something small before committing to a full programme.

Not this engagement

Internal network, Active Directory or cloud role review.
Business logic testing, or work that reads your source code.
Full exploitation chains against a defended estate.
Auditor-grade evidence for SOC 2 or PCI, which needs the full engagement above.

The fee is credited in full. Commission a full engagement within ninety days of your report and the whole review fee comes off the price. Consequently the review costs you nothing if you go on to the deeper work.

This is a different engagement, not a smaller version of the one above. Moreover, it is priced by scope rather than by depth of care. Consequently, where the review finds something that needs the deeper work, we say so plainly and quote it separately.

Read this before you write to us

Before you hire a hacker, read this

Roughly half the people who search hire a hacker want something illegal. So we would rather be blunt now than waste your time and ours.

Access any account, device or system without the owner's documented consent.
Monitor, track or surveil a private individual, whatever the relationship.
Recover access to an account that is not yours, including a partner's or an employee's.
Alter records, grades, balances or logs held by somebody else.
Trace, identify or retaliate against whoever attacked you. Report that to law enforcement.
Anything that would breach the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act or the Computer Misuse Act.

Unauthorised access is a criminal offence in the United States and the United Kingdom, and in the UK it is an offence regardless of intent. If your request involves any item above, we are not the right firm, and your message will not receive a reply.

The output

What you receive when you hire a hacker

You hire a hacker for evidence, so a test is only worth the fee if your engineers can act on it. Consequently every deliverable below is written to be handed straight to the people who will fix the problem.

01
Findings reportReproducible attack chains with evidence, not a scanner export. That is, each finding carries the steps, the impact, and the fix.
02
Business risk summaryTwo pages your board can read, because a severity rating alone tells an executive nothing.
03
Prioritised remediation planOrdered by real risk and effort, so your team knows what to do first on Monday morning.
04
Written debriefThe tester who ran the engagement writes the walkthrough and answers your questions in writing.
05
Free retestOnce you have applied the fixes we verify them, so closure is evidenced rather than assumed.

Analysis display in use after clients hire a hacker for an authorised test — Evidence capture in progress

Credentials and standards behind the work

OSCP practical exam OSEP evasion CREST accredited OWASP methodology PTES execution standard

Evidence

Proof from a real engagement

Client names stay confidential, so here is what it looks like when you hire a hacker. This extract comes from an authorised assessment, redacted for publication.

Engagement extract, redactedCritical

t+00h scope signed, testing window opens
t+06h exposed build runner token found
t+19h lateral move to service account
t+33h secrets read from vault path
t+41h domain administrator obtained
t+48h client notified, chain documented
day 10 three fixes shipped, retest clean

A retail group asked us to prove whether an attacker could reach their production identity systems. No scanner flagged that path, because every step looked harmless on its own. Our principal chained them and reached domain administrator in 41 hours.

In short, the fix was three configuration changes with zero downtime. Moreover, the retest confirmed all three, so the client closed the finding with evidence rather than a promise.

41hfrom kickoff to domain administrator

0client findings retained after delivery

Common questions

Questions before you hire a hacker

Is it legal to hire a hacker?

Yes, you may hire a hacker provided the testing is authorised. The law turns on permission rather than technique, so a signed scope from the system owner is what makes the work lawful. Without that document the same actions become a criminal offence, which is why we will not start until it exists.

How do I hire a hacker for my company?

To hire a hacker, send the form with what needs testing and roughly how large it is. We run a short scoping questionnaire, then return one fixed fee for the agreed scope. Once the authorisation is signed, testing usually starts within 48 hours.

How soon can you start after I hire a hacker?

Once you hire a hacker, testing begins within 48 hours of signed authorisation, assuming a window is free. Red team engagements need longer to prepare, because objectives and rules of engagement take more work to agree.

Can an individual hire a hacker, or only companies?

Individuals can hire a hacker here, and we accept a small number of private mandates each year for founders, executives and families with a genuine threat model. The same rules apply, that is, you must own the systems or hold written permission to have them tested.

What if my budget is smaller than $25,000?

You can still hire a hacker here. The Focused Exposure Review starts at $4,500 and is bounded to five external hosts and one web application, so it answers one question properly rather than stretching a full programme thin. Tell us your figure in the form, because we would rather scope honestly to what you have than quote work you did not ask for. Moreover, the review fee is credited in full against a full engagement commissioned within ninety days.

If I hire a hacker, do you keep our data?

No. Evidence and findings are destroyed once the project closes, and we sign your non-disclosure agreement before any technical discussion. We also do not publish client names without written permission.

Hiring guides

Before you hire a hacker: guides for authorised testing

Each guide covers one hiring question, from scope to deliverables, for systems you own.

Read all hiring guides