What is the difference between penetration testing and hacking?

Hacking attempts to identify and exploit one or more vulnerabilities. The classic goal of hackers is to infiltrate and compromise their victim. Penetration testing aims to identify all existing vulnerabilities in an IT application, an IT system or a company and then try to exploit them successfully. The techniques and tools used are identical, but the structural approach and the final goal are different. A hacker may be satisfied with the successful exploitation of a single vulnerability, a penetration tester only when he has analyzed the entire attack surface.