Ethical Hacking Essay

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What is Hacker?
What is a hacker? This term has been used a lot lately, especially due to the cyber attacks that have escalated to a whole new level in the recent years. According to Sjoholm and Rosencrance, a hacker is “an individual who uses computer, networking or other skills to overcome a technical problem”. It also refers to a person that gains unauthorized access to systems or networks for the purpose of committing acts of malicious intent. There are three different types of hackers: White hat, black hat and grey hat hackers. White hat hackers or ethical hackers are the hackers that seek to remain in the best interest of the pubic. Black hat hackers are criminals that seek to violate laws and regulations and cause chaos by illegally …show more content…

White hat hackers are ethical hackers, and their purpose is for evaluating the security measures of a system by conducting penetration testing and other exploitative acts against the network, with the hopes of exposing the vulnerabilities so that the customer is aware. Take a hacker that is hired by a company to do penetration testing on its network while another company is suffering from a hacker that was able to exploit a vulnerability in a Microsoft Office package and back door into the network, only to run malicious scripts that removed all of the system files…that is just an example. There is clearly a difference, however. Hacking is ethical if it benefits the client. Hacking is not ethical if it seeks to only benefit the originator of the hack, based upon malicious intent or personal beliefs. Going back to Kevin Mitnick who again was the most notorious hacker of all time, stealing code and causing over $300 million in damages (www.pbs.org). He works as a white hat hacker or an ethical hacker, servicing companies that he used to target as a black hat hacker. He works for the good of the

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