What do you think about ethical hacking?

[noname223]

Here is an article about it.

What Is Ethical Hacking and How Does It Work? | Synopsys

Explore ethical hacking, including its key concepts, necessary skills, and certifications. Learn about the problems ethical hackers identify and the limitations they face.

www.synopsys.com

Here is the defintion
Ethical hacking involves an authorized attempt to gain unauthorized access to a computer system, application, or data. Carrying out an ethical hack involves duplicating strategies and actions of malicious attackers. This practice helps to identify security vulnerabilities which can then be resolved before a malicious attacker has the opportunity to exploit them.

What is an ethical hacker?
Also known as "white hats," ethical hackers are security experts that perform these security assessments. The proactive work they do helps to improve an organization's security posture. With prior approval from the organization or owner of the IT asset, the mission of ethical hacking is opposite from malicious hacking.

There are several reasons why I find this interesting.

I am a noob concerning IT for me is hacking in some sense a form of magic.

Furthermore I think there is an allure for self-administered justice inside myself. So many people bullied or abused me and they were bascially not punished at all. I don't believe in justice in the afterlife. So I rather try to hope for justice in this world.

I watched a video about anonymous. They seem to be engaged in the war against Russia on the side of Ukraine. I find something like that interesting because I barely have knowledge on it. I am just curious but will never spend much time into detailed information on it.

What do you think about self-administered justice? It can be for sure dangerous. There are sometimes lines which are crossed by it with devastating consequences. I am ambivalent on this topic.

Edit: One cannot equate ethical hacking with hacktivism. Sorry for that.

 

[IntoTheLight]

White hat hacking isn't self-administered justice though. It's pen testing. The organization hires the hacker to find security holes. That's different from what anonymous does. Regarding self-administered justice though, I think it's fine against unethical actors where legal ways are unlikely to find a resolution. Russia would be such an example.

 

[Hirokami]

My issue with the article is that it conflates white hat hackers with gray hat hackers. A bit of a nitpick I'll admit, but I feel the distinction is important. Gray hats are the ones who are ethics-driven. In any case, I am of the opinion that sometimes people need to do "bad" (read: illegal) things for the greater good of their community.

 

[seewell]

I've worked as a full time pentester for a few years now and I'm more than happy to answer any questions anyone has about it.

From my perspective, the whole "hat" thing is completely irrelevant. It all boils down to legal vs illegal. The methods, reasons, etc are all the same. Many groups are labeled as "black hat", but a large portion of these are state sponsored groups, either officially or in some sort mercenary type of transaction. So, it really just depends on what side of the boarder you are on. The best hackers out there are not doing this work for small returns in crime or for ethical reasons. Governments and private organizations pay well for this kind of talent.

As for hacktivism or hacking out of some sense of justice, I think a lot of that is just excuses to cause havoc and just to have fun. There are a lot better ways to change things in the world than to hack a website, for example. Additionally, a lot of these organizations that are targets really don't care. Even if you do successfully hack them, teams like the one I work on do it regularly and nothing really changes once we report the issues we have found. Maybe they fix the specific technical issue, but the underlying issues in how the organization is run take a lot more work and rarely are fixed.

 

[Dead Ghost]

In my time there were hackers, crackers and phreakers...anyone else who worked checking the security of systems for a given company was simply an employee of the company that hired them, nothing more. Now they call them experts in computer security, but if you are paid to check the proper functioning of the systems you are not a hacker, that's for sure.

//

A la meva época hi havien els hackers, els crackers i els phreakers... qualsevol altre persona que treballés comprobant la seguretat dels sistemes per una empresa determinada era simplement un treballador de l'empresa que el contractava, res més. Ara els hi diuen experts en seguretat informàtica, però si et paguen per comprovar els bon funcionament dels sistemes un hacker no ets, això segur.

 

[hamvil]

Ethical hacking has nothing to do with social justice warriors or anything like that. Ethical hacking is about first training students on practical topics of cybersecurity after it is about conduction penetration tests on societies that actually pay good money for this service. Such activities are 100% legal and 100% ethical, they are like crash tests for cars for example. All universities have competition in this field as well.

 

[Forever Sleep]

I think I'm probably a rebel at heart, so I actually admire what white hat hackers do as well as the work of an organisation like Annonymous. I appreciate everyone's definitions that a lot of these methods are perfectly legal anyway. I suppose, even if they're not, I just like the idea of doing 'the right thing.' Obviously- that does indeed depend on what 'side' you are on when in comes to politics. Still- I think tracing a peadophile for instance is a good thing. Still- I suppose this could eventually be problematic in court if the information was obtained illegally. Guess I can see both sides of the argument.

On an unrelated note, I once went to an aircraft musuem that had a Vulcan bomber. Now- this was just the story of one of the ex-servicemen there- so I don't 100% know if it's true. But supposedly- one of these planes flew over the White House, took a picture and sent it to the American security forces to say- you might have a problem... As I say- might not even be true but it's a great story I think... And in a similar vein to your post I believe.