“Can hacking be made completely Ethical?”,
has turned out to be a million-dollar question of the 21st century.
The simple answer however is a big NO. As it is said “if God exists then even
demons do exist” similarly if an ethical hacker exists then his unethical
counterpart also exists in some part of the world.
Let’s explore what this ethical, unethical
fuss is all about and before that what hacking itself is?
In common terms, hacking basically is
stealing of information from someone’s electronic device, but on a broader
scale hacking involves targeting of high end servers to bring them down,
network jamming causing denial of service and lots of other deadly attack on a
PC, network or a server.
The ‘ethical’ version of hacking has been the
talk of the town ever since hacking came into picture. It continues to be an
unsolved riddle for many, as to how hacking can be made ethical, when the very
term of hacking itself is considered a crime by cyber police.
Now, consider a situation in which your
friend challenges you to hack his FB account. You do it successfully. Congrats,
you will shortly face a trial in cyber court. That is because even though your
friend might have given you permission in writing to hack his FB account, but
the fact is that your friend does not own Facebook. He only has an account in
it. Mark Zuckerburg can sue you in a cyber court. So need to be really careful.
Well, hacking does have a lot of merits,
which is a major reason why people are considering ethical hacking as a
profession and new courses on the same are being taught. Here is a look up at
when exactly can we call hacking as ethical.
Ethical hacking usually is done by an
organization itself to explore loopholes in its network security. Usually a
written statement is given by the organization to the hacker that he will not
be under any threat if he succeeds in hacking. An organization hires a
certified hacker to try and hack into its network and get critical information.
Now the hacker can either succeed or fail in hacking. If he fails its good,
because this implies that the company has a strong network security which is if
highly difficult, if not impossible to be hacked. The other scenario could be
that the hacker succeeds in what he is up to. But this absolutely causes no
loss to the company since it is aware of what’s happening. In fact, this helps
the organization in identifying the flaws in its network security and thus
improving the same. The ethical hacker however after finishing his work should
not leave any footprints behind which could aid a not ethical hacker to re hack
the system. Greater luxuries of hacking, are however enjoyed by Indian
intelligence bureau who intercept conversations which are fishy. Not only the
Indian intelligence agencies, other top intelligence agencies have got an army
of hackers who are deemed to be “ethical” because they are working for the good
or at least to prevent the bad.
So, for those of you who are excited to pursue a career as an
ethical hacker, here are the three most sought after courses in this domain:
· Certified Ethical Hacker V9(CEH).
· Global Information Assurance Certification
Penetration tester(GIAC)
· Offensive Security Certified
professional(OSCP)
