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Essay on Ethical Computer Hacking

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Have you ever been a victim of a cyber crime? Something as simple as a weird pop up that won't go away? Or maybe something a little bit more serious like your personal web page gets hi-jacked? All this "malicious" damage that causes you much grief isn't so much the work of a hacker, per se, but more the work of a "cracker" or a "script kiddie". Now you're confused right? Well let's just say everyone who knows how manipulate a computer isn't doing it on bad and evil terms, like writing a virus to deploy on a certain date to permanently delete certain file extensions. But maybe they're the people sitting hours on end to deploy a fix for that certain virus someone else is writing, or safeguarding a local bank's network to make sure that virus …show more content…

These are the people setting the very negative example of computer literate people around the world. They know no morals, or ethical value behind what they do, but to compromise, and cause havoc upon the end user computing world. Hackers fall into two categories: Black Hat and White Hat Hackers. While Black Hat hackers illegally crack into systems for malicious reasons, their White Hat counterparts probe and test for security flaws and IT research (Black Hat/White Hat). The term "hacker" can be explained as a person who enjoys learning the details of a computer system and how to stretch their capabilities beyond a person who learns the bare minimum to use a computer (Palmer). By this definition, a hacker can be anyone who is willing to expand their knowledge with a computer to better benefit themselves, or more importantly, others. Many people disregard the ethical sense to hacking and believe all forms of hacking to be unjust, which is untrue, but hacking can be very beneficial. White Hat, or Ethical Hacking can be very useful by having security professionals attempt to break in to explore and try to exploiting systems to discover a loop-hole or security flaw in a network. This is similar to having independent auditors come into an organization to verify its bookkeeping records. These White Hat hackers are usually experts in their field and use the

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