Ethical Hacking the three shades White Hat, Black Hat, Gray Hat Research Paper

Ethical Hacking the three shades White Hat, Black Hat, Gray Hat - Research Paper Example 2010; Snyder, 2006; Mahmood et al., 2010; Smith et al., 2002; Pashel, 2006; Raether, 2008) II. Introduction Hacking has become the stuff of national security talk in the US and other countries recently, with the proliferation of news with regard to accusations that China is leading a concerted effort to hack into very critical systems owned by the US government as well as private enterprises around the world. Some of the most recent reports tie the concerted hacking efforts to the Chinese military, indicating that not only is the hacking sanctioned by government, but is being done with its active support, with the intent to gain from the vast intelligence that can be had from the hacking exercises. This recent spate of news has put hacking in a bad light. Clearly this kind of hacking is unethical, because of the intent to gain from illegally breaking into global information systems, and without the permission of the system owners. From the point of view of international law, this is unethical and clearly criminal (Sanger, Barboza and Perlroth, 2013; Navarro, 2013; Olson, 2012). On the other hand it is worthwhile to note that ethical hacking is offered as a course in some universities, as in the case of a course offering in Northumbria University, entitled Ethical Hacking for Computer Security Bsc. It is an honors course. The goal of the course is to be able to produce ethical hackers who are adept at penetrating into systems with the use of tools to hack into them, so that the weaknesses and flaws of those systems may be identified and strengthened/addressed appropriately (Northumbria University, 2010). This testifies to many things, among them being that ethical hacking is a mainstream, legitimate activity, rather than something that can be deemed as criminal. The intent here is to bolster security rather than to breach systems with malice and with an intent to commit crimes. This is reflected as much in the Oxford Dictionary definition of the term, which also underlines the growing importance of ethical hacking and ethical hackers to be able to make systems more secure (Oxford University Press, 2013). That ethical and unethical hacking both exist, as typified by the two contrasting examples above, is further reflected in the way these two types of hacking are immortalized in the literature, via the contrasting designation of black hat hacking representing the practice of unethical and criminal hacking, and white hat hacking, or ethical hacking. There is also gray hat hacking, which, as the term connotes, is part ethical and part unethical. This latter term also denotes a hacker who has had experience with doing hacking on both sides of the fence. The arguments against hacking in general point to the aspect of the debate with regard to whether hacking has any place at all in legal society. This line of thinking says that all hacking is potentially illegal. Those in favor of ethical hacking, on the other hand, admit as much, but then posi ts the example of the locksmith. If one is locked into a house, for instance, because one lost the keys to the door, then it makes sense to call a locksmith to create new