Is There Such a Thing as Ethical Hacking Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Is There Such a Thing as Ethical Hacking - Essay Example This sudden increase in popularity made authorities restrict its usage; this made programmers use different ways to get into different systems by stealing passkeys, by looking for vulnerabilities in the protected systems and exploiting them to access programs that they want to use and to alter the restrictions levied by the authority (COFFIN, 2003). Initially these intrusions were con ducted for small purposes such as for fun and to steal computer time, but as restrictions increased, the degree of harm done by these break-ins became adverse. For example: due to these break-ins, computer system owners had to get their computers repaired in certain instances and they even experienced major losses. The destructions conducted by intruders, were soon caught by the eyes of media and media reported these destructions while referring computer criminals as hackers and presenting them as people who intrude computer systems to gain enjoyment, benefits and revenge. During the early days of hacki ng, the term hacker was referred to as a person who has great skills, so different terminologies were invented to differentiate between hackers who use this skill to conduct destructive activities and those who don’t commit too much damage. Discussion As internet became a portion of the human world, concerns for security for computer systems have increased for organizations and government. Increase in concern for security has been of top most issue because these business and governments want to conduct business activities such as managing, marketing and financing through the use of computer technology and they have a fear of being hacked. While on the other end customers have a fear that their personal information and information that can cause huge damage can be caused due to vulnerabilities in security system. One way to solve this issue figured out by authorities was to make independent hackers break into these systems and analyze the degree of vulnerability and security r isk faced by these systems. In such cases, hacking is considered as auditing firm’s records to find out what the problem is and people who conduct this kind of hacking are recognized as ethical hackers and the task they perform is referred to as ethical hackers. They are referred to as â€Å"ethical† hackers because they are conducting this task with the consent of the organizations, they are conducting these tasks for the right reasons which are to find vulnerabilities in the system and provide solutions and protective measures to make the systems safe. This system of Ethical hacking is being used for years, for example: this method was once utilized by the air force of United States of America to identify any possible weaknesses and vulnerabilities in the system regarded as Multics (Ethical 2001). The end result of this exercise determined that Multics was one of the best systems and was better than other systems; still it had certain degree of weaknesses and vulnera bilities. These vulnerabilities were identified in the hardware, software and processes of the system, and these vulnerabilities could be exploited very easily. The efforts made by the ethical hackers helped identify the sources and the secrets that could have been easily obtained by unethical