When is hacking justifiable

He also did not use the poor as pawns in his fight with the rich. Also, if the company wants to plug in the holes then they would hire someone to do it for them. It is their responsibility to take care of their own. Outside hackers are breaking into others systems which is outside their right. If you lock your door and some stranger broke in to prove that it was possible, they still performed breaking and entering which is against the law.

While the patch itself requires you to use a rom and emulator, the creators encourage you to buy a legitimate copy of the game out of appreciation. In the long run, this hack will benefit the games designers as it will introduce the product to a larger fan base. Doing something for the good of someone else against their will is rarely justified. Nintendo and Ape Laboratories between them have produced enough successful games to know how to sell games, but we impatiently pressurise them to make a decision that they are waiting for the opportune moment to do so.

You can encourage them all you want, how many do you think will actually buy the real game, which would be useless to them. Hacks can be used as a powerful and effective artistic expression. Examples of this include hacks of toy and games console sound cards to be able to use all the sounds available, or the creation of personalised barcodes that register in scanners. Art should not be forced upon people. Im not sure i buy that.

Youre saying its artistic to hack a game for content they created? But nonetheless, hacking yourself is not quite what this argument is about :P. Anonymous is a group of hackers with political motivations. Hacker culture itself is a political statement about freedom of speech and freedom of information.

We represent the changes demanded by technology that governments and industries are resisting with all their might. We want copyright and patent laws to be reformed to fit their purpose, and your privacy and freedom of speech to be upheld and protected.

These kind of actions are creating a culture afraid to speak its own mind for fear of reprisals. The hackers, that make them no better than the people they are attacking.

In the recent PSN attacks it is costing Sony millions, how much more will it cost them, and how long before that then transpires into loss of employment for potentially thousands of employees that are just trying to earn a living.

Surely a more effective way would have been to demonstrate to Sony that they had been hacked privately to allow them to improve their security, and then published on the net that Sony had been breached and have been advise of their weakness in security. This would have achieved the same end result, everyone would know and peoples personal information would not be up for grabs.

How many fraudulent actions can be made from the information released that will end up costing the user. If a hack reveals or exposes criminal activity, and the relevant information is given to the authorities, then the hack is most certainly justified, and is a net benefit to society.

The same can be said for corruption — the public benefit from being made aware of serious corruption, and the ones responsible deserve to be publicly exposed. Some modern hackers strictly conform to applicable laws, whereas the majority does not really care.

Modern hackers can have a broad spectrum of incentives for their activities. White hats do respect applicable laws. In a dichotomic world, they are the good guys. Their incentive is to protect software, computers, networks and the IT infrastructures from the bad guys, the so-called black hats or crackers.

According to Technopedia n. They might also have other motivations such as cyber vandalism for example. Their values lead to illegal activities. Grey hats are hackers whose intentions are not fundamentally malicious, but who accept irregular compliance with the law to reach their objectives, which distinguishes them from white hats. Contrary to black hats, greed is not their typical main incentive. Grey hats might also share some incentives with white hats and so-called true hackers: personal fun, peer recognition, intellectual challenges, etc.

However, they do not really share the original hacker ethic. Many different definitions are used for terms categorising modern hackers. These definitions are not always fully compatible. They bring different nuances. There is a need for a more systematic classification. Nowadays, our whole society heavily depends on information and information technologies: transport and communication systems, medical facilities, SCADA control systems, electrical grid, nuclear plants and other critical infrastructures, government activities and voting systems, commercial exchanges and payment infrastructures, security-oriented surveillance technologies, or even military control systems.

With the advent and the development of smart cars, autonomous drones, smart medical devices and the Internet of Things, our physical world is becoming even more intertwined with the virtual one. To mimic a famous slogan, 3 what happens on the Internet does not necessarily stay on the Internet anymore. Lives are at stake. The very functioning of our society now relies on the Internet.

A disruption of Internet services and other information infrastructure can paralyse a whole country. This creates a new paradigm and extra incentives for hacking activities. As a direct consequence, we observe the emergence of new categories of hackers: state-sponsored hackers , spy hackers or even cyber-terrorists. The target can be an individual, a company, a facility, an infrastructure or even a state. Whereas black hats foster cyber-crime and cyber-security countermeasures, state-sponsored hackers or cyber-terrorists have given rise to new concepts such as cyber-war, cyber-defence and cyber-peace.

The term seems to have evolved since the 60s and describes very different realities nowadays. They do not want to be considered in the same category as security breakers and cyber-criminals. Curiously, the second definition seems completely opposite to the typical common understanding as it emphasises the inexperience of the hacker at a particular activity.

The last two definitions better capture the main meanings in the context of this chapter. The third one is general and covers most of the modern categories of hackers, whereas the last one is close to what we call a black hat or a cracker. One who is proficient at using or programming a computer; a computer buff. One who uses programming skills to gain illegal access to a computer network or file.

One who demonstrates poor or mediocre ability, especially in a sport: a weekend tennis hacker. Those definitions only describe large categories of hackers. We need to delve deeper into subtle differences to distinguish between the many terms used nowadays to characterise hackers in the context of computerised systems and eventually to precisely define what an ethical hacker is.

A more systematic classification requires, as a first step, a taxonomy , i. A second stage of classification is ascription , i. Ascription corresponds to the identification of a hacker as belonging to a specific class. When the entity is a person, i. A key aim of this paper is to develop a classification of modern hackers, related to categories of authentication technologies. It corresponds to what the hacker knows and is able to do. The scope considers the expertise environments OS, protocols, network, etc.

Next to their technical skills, some hackers might possess social engineering expertise. This might appear to be useful for black hats in order to bypass physical or logical security measures. However, social engineering requires significant social skills, and not all hackers are social engineering experts. Hackers can be geeks. However, they can work together, typically under the direction of the same entity, a conductor.

They can also be personal or related to a particular community. The external attitude describes the modus operandi. Actions can be potential or actual. Some hackers will act according to what they are able to do, as long as this is compatible with their goals. Others will stop as soon as their actions could become illegal or incompatible with some moral principles. These targets span from individual properties, to companies or even to country-level assets.

Hackers can work alone, in criminal networks or in state-sponsored groups. They can work for themselves or as mercenaries on behalf of a conductor.

In the economic paradigm, hackers can be classified according to three categories, namely what they know their expertise, i. In the societal paradigm, hackers are also characterised by what they have their tools , i. Indeed, state-sponsored hackers can have access to classified information and weaponised zero-days, to sneaking, eavesdropping or deep packet inspection tools.

More traditional hackers usually do not have access to these resources. Some state-sponsored hackers might even have privileged access to specific locations: Internet backbone or other key physical IT-infrastructures. State-sponsored hackers can work directly for a government, e.

Alternatively, they might work for official companies selling hacking products and services to governments. Eventually, they might also belong to mercenary groups selling their services to governmental or non-governmental organisations.

Black hats are skilled programmers and computer experts who look for vulnerabilities in software, protocols, OS, computers and servers, in other physical or virtual devices, and in network systems in order to support their malicious intentions. They do not abide by ethical values and do not respect laws. Black hats typically use bugs and exploits to gain unauthorised access to a computer system or an IT-infrastructure with both malicious intent and, typically, illegal means.

They aim to steal sensitive information, and personal or corporate data. They attempt to trick users or companies in order to get money transferred to accounts they have access to. They might work alone, belong to professional criminal networks or act as mercenaries by selling their services to such networks or a conductor crime-as-a-service. All black hats are cyber-criminals, but not all cyber-criminals are black hats. Indeed, many cyber-criminals do not have much expertise. They are not hackers themselves; rather, they buy and use tools or services developed by black hats.

G rey hats are skilled programmers and computer experts who look for vulnerabilities in software, protocols, OS, computers and servers, in other physical or virtual devices, and in network systems in order to have fun, to play around, to solve a challenge, to be granted peer recognition, or to improve the IT-security of a system.

Usually their intentions are not malicious and financial gain is not their main incentive. They might comply with their own moral principles that can differ from the original hacker ethic. They do not necessarily respect applicable laws, which distinguishes them from white hats.

A white hat acts legally and tries to be trustworthy for companies or other organisations that may purchase his or her services. A black hat acts both illegally and maliciously, e. A grey hat does not attempt to be trustworthy for companies or organisations; he or she may act illegally when required to pursue his or her goal.

However, he or she does not act maliciously and attempts to minimise harm and avoid unnecessary harm. For example, a grey hacker motivated by ideological goals e. Nonetheless, he acts illegally in most jurisdictions because he lacks the consent of the attacked party and may also cause some harm e.

Crackers 6 are black or grey hats who perform computer and system break-ins without permission. As a consequence, their activities are illegal. Phreakers are phone crackers. Note that such descriptions correspond to hackers described as personae, or social roles, not to flesh and bone individuals. It is logically possible for the same individual to sometimes act as a white hat and sometimes as a grey hat hacker in incognito.

However, such an individual would have to keep those identities—corresponding to the different persona, the white and the grey hat—completely separated for the public eye.

Indeed, the reputation as a grey hat hacker undermines all grounds for trustworthiness that are essential to being employed as a white hat hacker.

Of course, it is also theoretically possible for an individual to transact from one personae to another one: e. Moreover, the conversion may not be sufficient to make the individual trustworthy. Indeed, many security companies would not hire a former black hat. Robot n. However, the character has an unstable personality and is schizophrenic. An ethical hacker will try to act similarly to a black hat but without causing any tort to the company.

He will look for vulnerabilities that could be exploited by malicious hackers, both in the physical world and in the virtual one. Such a code of conduct sets a frame for their attitude. It describes rules that the ethical hacker must abide by. These rules prevent the ethical hacker from taking any personal advantage of his relationship with his client. This fosters the creation of a trusted relationship similar to the special relationship between a medical doctor and his or her patients, or between a lawyer and his or her clients.

The company needs to trust that the ethical hacker will not misuse his or her potential privileged access into its IT-infrastructure in order to introduce backdoors or to infringe privacy, neither during the mandate, nor after the contract is fulfilled. These rules also aim at protecting the ethical hacker and making his or her work legal de facto. Different curricula even propose training and certifications in order for a hacker to become a certified ethical hacker CEH.

Ethical issues are evaluated according to a collection of ethical values and moral principles in regards to objectives and behaviours in a specific context. Inethical hacking can be defined as hacking that does not abide by any ethical value. Inethical hacking does not imply unethical behaviour, but removes ethical barriers and in doing so increases the risk of actual unethical behaviour. Greed is not an ethical value or a moral principle. Black hats typically perform inethical hacking that leads to unethical behaviour.

However, what is ethical hacking fundamentally? Is it hacking that respects at least an ethical value? Certainly not, as such a hacking might infringe other fundamental ethical values. Indeed, intuitively, in order for hacking to be deemed ethical it should respect at least the most important ethical values at stake, balanced in a reasonable way. Therefore, non-inethical hacking is not necessarily ethical.

We could start to define prima facie unethical hacking as hacking that infringes at least one ethical value or moral principle in an actual context.

Prima facie means that the hacking seems unethical, although it may cease to appear so after a thorough examination of the issue. By contrast, the ultima facie ethical or unethical choice considers all relevant reasons, also those pulling in opposite directions, and tries to determine what is best all things considered.

Under this logic, non-prima facie unethical hacking would be hacking that respects all ethical values and moral principles in that context.

It makes sense to consider that any non- prima facie unethical hacking is ethical. Thinking from the perspective of an attacker and identifying the security holes enables them to do their job effectively. Ethical hacking requires a profound knowledge of computer systems and networks along with a zeal to solve challenging puzzles. Penetration testing enables hackers to get an overview of the network and its vulnerabilities and paves way for successful attacking.

The probe and attack method enlists the use of already existing tools to exploit networks. This is a time-consuming process, especially in case of brute — force attacks. Also, being alert to the changes in the network is necessary to get insider access to root accounts in a corporate network.

Information received is retrieved in the form of log files. The most crucial part of hacking is to leave no trace behind. If not properly dealt with, the attacker might get his hands on the information already stored by the ethical hacker. These methods are used by both hackers and crackers, the difference being only in their intentions.

While crackers work to get access to sensitive information, hackers do it to rectify the flaws in the network and improve its security. As outlined before, the only difference between the job of ethical hackers and hackers is their intention, thereby, all ethical hackers need to document their work. Since crackers perform their attacks in odd hours, hackers may have to compromise on their daily schedule. Additionally, trust is a major issue in hacking and one wrong move could bring their career to a standstill.

The biggest challenge that hackers face is explaining the security flaws to the company and training them to protect their data from penetration in the future. Being transparent to the clients is the key here.