Lyecdevf wrote:Yeah, I have heard about ethical hacking many times in the last few months. I do not know why that is so. Is this some thing new or has it become "cool" all of the sudden. Or maybe I am just new to the scene and I just happen to hear a lot about it.
I think that in a way it takes the fun and the mystery out of it. When you do this for a job I think that in a couple of years you wont get excited any more.
I am not sure wether I am right but as an annonimious hacker you have much more freedom. I am sure that those who do this for a job have strict guide lines. I am not sure that they can do any thing that thier hearts desire. I doubt they they are going to write an exploit code and post it on the net so they would get credit for that. They can only be white hat hackers and that sucks if you ask me.
I am glad you wrote this, it brings out two points -
1. ethical hacking - is it new?
2. hacking professionally is boring and are white hats only.
Ethics on the internet is courtesy, respect, and honesty. Back then, the internet was a scientific society, networking universities and even military insitutions. The courtesy to post clear communications was very important, they were helpful to others because they want to share intelligence. Respect of other people, and their equipment. Honesty not to harm another machine or person's work if you found an exploit. Too many people on the internet think their personality and anonymity is their right.
There are many grey hat security consulting groups, they started black hat even. I agree if you don't know how to break the 'rules' you can't begin to understand how crackers think to protect yourself.
Unfortunately times have changed, before there were no clear laws or legal recourse for hacking someone's system to prove an exploit exist. Now, hacking has to be done in a computer lab to avoid legal issues, even then cases of the worm or exploit escaping that computer lab has happened!
The wrong way to go about proving your skill is to hack a network without authorization, or releasing a virus or worm. Read the news.
People failed to be ethical, so now the governments have to step in and dictate our behavior...
DNR