Heroes and Villains are cut from the same cloth

a white hat hacker

A computer hacker is any skilled computer expert that uses their technical
prowess to overcome a problem. While “hacker” actually refers to any computer
programmer, today, the mainstream usage of the word “hacker” mostly refers to
cyber criminals. Clear from the definitions mentioned above that there is a
controversy that encounters the judgment and definition of hacking,
controversy arised because it's hard to decide exactly what the aim is behind
hacking or how to know the mentality of the hacker. That's why the ethics and
motivation of hackers should be paid attention and discussed then
understanding the hacker will be much easier.

Hacker can be anyone who has knowledge of things; he can be a graduate or
a computer professional working at a multinational company. He can be one
amongst us. He is part of the society, a computer professional who wants to use
technology for his own benefit. Hackers are experts and professional people who
first enjoy the technology and through research and development they gain
more interest and you never know when this curiosity of technology changes into
crime.

Many reasons can motivate people to get into hacking. The challenging part of
the hacker's personality as the biggest motivation; this means that the hacker
feels the joy and excitement when hacking systems that are provided with the
most perfect security tools. One of the main reasons for hacking is excitement
where hackers find adrenalin rush to break the law, to find an easy access to
earn money by hacking crucial information of the customers by creating unreal
shopping websites and obtaining payment details, credit card details. But now as
even bank transactions are made through the internet, hackers can even carry
out nefarious and convoluted heists. Take the recent Bangladesh bank heist for
example. Hackers were able to steal $81 million from the country’s national
reserves only by using online transactions. Not only banks, but also the
healthcare, IT sector, and the e-commerce (retail) sector can all be targeted by
hackers for financial information. But in this information is power. Hackers are
also motivated to steal secrets: espionage. Hackers look for secrets they or their
employers can use to gain a competitive edge. For other hackers, secret insights
into another country’s political and military secrets can be motivation to launch
an espionage attack.

But is hacking all that bad? No. Although the term “hacking” might seem vague
and distrustful for most individuals because of how hackers are portrayed in
mass media such as unlawful and people who are hunted by the government,
there are plenty of times when hacking is useful and productive.hacking can be
used to fix systems and software, and more importantly to prevent future
probabilities of these systems being hacked themselves. This useful application
of hacking is called ethical hacking. Ethical hacking simply means attempting to
hack one’s system, network, or software in order to identify the threats to it and
mitigate it in the future. In other words, ethical hackers are the “preventers” for
hackers such as black hats, who are generally regarded as cyber criminals for
trying to infiltrate security systems simply for their own gain. Another term for
these ethical hackers are “white hats” and most industries today, ranging from
digital companies, security providers, and especially banks have hired them.

Ethical hacking has many use cases:
1. Application Testing: Done to uncover flaws in the system at the very core or
logical level
2. Remote or war dialing: Used to test open-ended modem connections that
remotely connect to a network
3. Local network testing: Deals with testing of services, protocols, system devices
and virtual private networks
4. Wireless security: A method of measuring the level of security available in the
framework as a whole
5. System hardening: Done to strengthen the host and mend weaknesses
6. Stolen laptop: Done using the PC of an important employee, this test examines
for passwords and personal information stored in a dial-up software
7. Social engineering: This type of hacking is very difficult to carry out as it
involves people, personalities, and employees.

Although an ethical hacker might not be able to prevent the most vicious and
concentrated cybercrime attacks, ethical hacking procedures will ensure certain
malicious behavior can be recognized and taken care of before they pose a
threat. Ethical hackers think like criminal-hackers (“black hats”). Most automatic
vulnerability assessment software are not quite intelligent. But human
intelligence and understanding can easily help find out flaws in systems. Also
with the looming threat of cyber warfare and increasing cases of cyber terrorism,
even governments and the military have begun to open cyber crime branches
and hire “white hat” hackers.

In conclusion, what this means is that hacking could be productive and essential
for the advancement of technology in the world especially in this ever-growing
environment. Ethical hacking is the best tool to examine the security of
computer systems and aegis against the plague of black-hats.

Al Jazeera

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(Editorial 2)