Ethical Hacking

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Ethical hacking, in my opinion, is just as much as an oxymoron as ‘constructive criticism’. Before I go on to show that ‘ethical hacking’ is but an oxymoron only in the literal sense, it is essential for one to understand the words ’ethical’ and ‘hacking’ - origin, meaning and the misconception. ‘Ethical’ can be defined as ‘working with high professional morals and principles’. The original hacker was a person who liked to tinker with software and hardware alike, enjoying and exploring the way the things work. They would tweak their subject to perform faster, better or differently than it initially did. There was nothing negative about being a hacker, until the word was repeatedly misused by the media, synonymising ‘crackers’ with ‘hackers’. Due to the common misconception, nowadays, the words have exchanged meanings. Originally, while hackers are the good guys, or ‘White Hats’, ‘crackers’ are the malicious hackers who break into systems for personal gain - fame, money, even revenge. Today’s terminology, however, has hackers as the malicious, while the ethical hackers are the heroes.

Ethical hackers are those people that chose to serve clients , working in corporations, rather than sitting in obscure rooms, trudging the internet for exploitable victims and causing unwanted and unnecessary discomfort. They are the people that chose their dangerous skills for the better - they crack systems on legal permission of corporations to point out any loopholes that can be exploited by their malicious counterparts. Even though ethical hackers use the same methods as their less principled counterparts, we can safely say that their intent is quite the opposite from the latter.

“To catch a thief, think like a thief…”

An ethical hack...

... middle of paper ...

...uth Icon 2008, Indo-American Society Young Achiever Award 2005, IT Leader Award 2005, Person of The Year 2002, Limca Book of Records, Hall of Fame Award, Outstanding Young Achiever's Award, Silicon India Person of the Week, Embassy State Award, Best Speaker Award (4 occasions) and many more

Ankit Fadia’s life and achievements have shown us the true face of an ethical hacker, and the need of having people with his designation, caliber and ideas in our society. It is people like him that also help keep us safe from dangers we are unaware of. Without ethical hackers, we have no cyber security - which is immensely essential in today’s hi-tech world. We use technology such as credit cards in our everyday life. If it were not for the ethical hackers recruited by your credit card companies, everyday would have revealed expensive purchases in different part of the world.

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