Can hacking ever be ‘Ethical’?

Lets first be on a common platform and start with the pretext that hackers are bad guys and hacking is a bad thing because we have different understanding of these terms.

By law of the own land, IT Act 2000 and IT Act (Amdt) 2008 and everywhere else hacking is a crime and a punishable offense. Hacking can be best defined as ‘ bypassing a computer security mechanism’ or to make it simpler, ‘unauthorized access of someone’s digital resource’  and ethical is something morally correct. So how can it be ethical? It can’t be.

Most of the people don’t understand between the meaning of ethical hacking and hacking. But normally when we speak of Ethical Hacking we mean proper permission is taken from concerned authorities to find out weaknesses in a system or a network. But I think we should call it is Penetration Testing as it is legally correct.

If hacking can be ethical then we should should also have something like ethical robbery or ethical murder. That means you rehearse the way how a murderer will plan to kill his victim. Its actual nonsense.

There are many educational institutes conducting courses on Ethical Hacking . My opinion is that they should change the name, as Hacking can never ever be ethical. There is a difference between a hacker, and a penetration tester and the educational institutes should understand that.

Name: Santosh Khadsare

About the author: CEH (Certified Ethical Hacker), RHCSA (Red Hat Certified System Administrator), Life Member (Computer Society of India)