In computer security, a hacker is termed as someone who performs a thorough search and seeks to exploit weaknesses and loop-holes in a computer network. A lot of reasons has been known to motivate this kind of act, some of which are:

–          Profit making, e.g. hacking financial institutions or accounts,

–          Protest, e.g. a disgruntled or unhappy worker could hack into his/her organization’s network just to destabilize the system and

–          Challenge, which could rise up among geeky friends.

Recently in the society, the work of hackers has been viewed as providing a “public service”, as it now reveals and exposes some lies that have been believed to be the truth, and establishes ways to verify them.

However, there are hackers who perform hacking, not to destroy, but to create and attempt to achieve only good ends, they are known as “White Hat Hackers”, and this category is what this write-up is about: Ethical Hacking.

Ethical Hacking is a term that was coined by IBM. It is term that describes hacking performed to assist an organization or a person in identifying possible threats, security risks and exposures on the computer or network. An ethical hacker attempts to bypass the system security panel, seeking weak points in the security that could be exploited by other hackers (Black Hat Hackers). The company or client that employed the services of the ethical hacker uses what the ethical hacker finds to improve on security architecture of their systems and networks, in an effort to minimize, and possibly eliminate, any potential hacker attacks.

Rules guiding Ethical Hacking

In order for hacking to be deemed ethical, the hacker must obey the below rules.

1. The ethical hacker must have permission to probe the network and attempt to seek and identify potential security risks and threats. It is recommended that he/she gets written consent.
2. The hacker must respect the individual’s or company’s privacy and only go looking for security issues.
3. He/she must report all security vulnerabilities detected to the company, not leaving anything open for himself/herself or someone else to come in at a later time.
4. The software developer or hardware manufacturer must be made aware of any security vulnerabilities located in their software or hardware if not already known by the company.

REFERENCES

Computer Hope: Ethical Hacking (http://www.computerhope.com/jargon/e/ethihack.htm). Accessed May 13, 2014.

Wikipedia: Hacker (computer security) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_(computer_security). Accessed May 13, 2014.

Wikipedia: White hat (computer security) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_hat_(computer_security)). Accessed May 13, 2014.