Exploring the Ethical Dimensions of Hacking in Modern Cybersecurity

Ethical hacking plays a crucial role in modern cybersecurity by identifying vulnerabilities before malicious hackers do. This essay explores the diverse motivations behind ethical hacking, from improving security systems to advancing technological knowledge. By examining various hacker communities, including the Free/Open Source Software (FOSS) community and the Hacker Party movement, this paper highlights how ethical guidelines shape responsible hacking practices. Ethical considerations are crucial in differentiating between constructive and destructive hacking activities. Additionally, the essay discusses educational approaches in ethical hacking, emphasizing situational awareness and real-world applicability. Through a comprehensive analysis of existing literature on hacker ethics and security education, this exploration aims to foster a deeper understanding of ethical hacking's importance in safeguarding digital infrastructures.

Running head: HACKER ETHICS
Topic: Hacker Ethics
Name of the student:
Name of the university:

1HACKER ETHICS
Introduction
The expression named as computer hacking helps to carry out the image of unscrupulous
techies, who widely use their skills and knowledge for sensitive copy of the information.
Computer hacking helps to steal consumer’s identities and all other disable vital computer
networks. However, nowadays most of the business organizations are currently hiring
professional IT hackers to collect confidential information of other companies. Sometimes it is
beneficial but at the same time in some of the cases it is disadvantageous. The role of the
computer hackers are to find out the potential weakness. In the wider society including Business
Corporation and government body, hacker’s ethics has brought huge changes.
The benefits of hacker’s ethics and its role to keep the big corporation on their toes are
elaborated in this essay. In addition to this, the principles those are necessary to follow in the big
corporations, while hacking any information from the server, are also illustrated in this essay.
Besides this, for the improvement of the business organization only ethical hacking should be
maintained.
Benefits and challenges of ethical hacking
Ethical hacking is referred to as one of the most important actions to be followed to
reduce the ethical issues. It helps to built proper computer systems which prevent the hackers to
access and safeguard the system as well as data from the malicious attacks. Hacker’s ethics helps
to manage sufficient measures to avoid all organizational security breaches. In addition to this it
also helps to test the regular network channels. At each business level, hacker’s ethics can create
security level awareness among the corporate world. The disadvantages and advantages of
ethical hacking are as follows:
 Through ethical hacking fighting against terrorism and national security breaches
become easier.
 With the help of ethical hacking no outsiders will be able to access data from the
computing system
 It helps to provide adequate preventing measure in the prevention security
breaches

2HACKER ETHICS
The aims of the hackers are to figure out some of those activities those are not even
explored before. Thus, in the earlier industries, the sense of the hacker was defined as the
imaginative mechanics. According to some of the laws and policies all individuals are not
allowed to do all the works in the computing network. It means that they were prohibited to do
all the activities with the computing system. However, some of the activities done by the people
were termed as unprofessional (Hartley 2015). Through breaking the regular rules and policies
some of the activities were done by the users and thus those are defined as illegal. Hacking is a
process of data stealing without asking the owner of data. In other words hacking is the activities
of the unauthenticated users. With the changing time period, the concept of hacking and hackers
are also developing.
There are some ethical principles those are required to be widely followed by the
business organizations and the hackers also (Baloch 2014). It is found that hacking would
motivate and limit the cyber security issues of the companies. The list principles of hacker’s
ethics are as follows:
 Decentralization approach is needed to be promoted in case of mistrust authority
 The public data are needed to be available to the users and the private information should
be kept secured from the unauthorized access
 The hackers are required to be judged according to their performance and not according
to their degrees, position, age, race etc.
Examples of cyber security
In the first six months of 2017, the world has seen numerous number of cyber security
meltdowns. None of the security breach was termed as the standard corporate breach. Nowadays
almost every day the data braches are taking place all over the world. It is the responsibility of
both the owners and the users to make sure that the new of hacking is not affecting the users
financially or operationally (Coleman and Golub 2008). From the current technology survey it
has been found that in the year of 2017, numerous numbers of cyber attacks in terms of hacking
have been occurring.

3HACKER ETHICS
Example 1: Dated on 28th January, 2018
Theft of Japan Cryptocurrency
According to the market capitalization of Japan, around 260,000 people of Japan have
lost their Cryptocurrency due to online hacking. Around $400 M amount have been stolen by the
hackers, which is said to be refunded to the consumers. This news is one of the biggest digital
fund thefts in the year of 2017 (Powell 2016). Apart from bitcoins all the crypto currencies have
been theft by the online thieves. Due to this unauthorized access, Japan has faced many serious
financial issues. After admitting 850,000 coins that is worth of $480 M Japan realizes that the
Tokyo based bitcoins exchange has been collapsed (Allen-Robertson 2013). The consumers of
Japan were very badly affected due to this financial disaster. The country has planned to
implement coin check applications.
Example 2: Dated on 12th Feb, 2018
Crypto jacking attacked the website of Australian Government
According to this news a series of Australian Government websites, including the
Victorian parliament, website also was hijacked by the hackers. The websites were compromised
by the malware which hacked the set of information forcefully from the website (Coleman
2009). This particular process is known as crypto jacking. The official website of Australian
parliament was attacked by crypto jacking.
Example 3: Dated on 14th Feb, 2018
Huge crypto jacking campaign earns $24 for the hackers
According to the company which had developed the software to be used found that due to
malware attacks, over than 1000 websites were turned into Cryptocurrency engines and it had
made jus a $24. The hackers have used malware to retrieve the hidden data by inserting a link
with the software piece. From the news it has been found that, the campaign has generated less
than around $25. Despite the widespread nature of the attacks, that is used for BrowseAloud as a
doorway to around 5,000 websites, but the total cash earned from the incident was very small.
Example 4: Dated on 29th January, 2018

4HACKER ETHICS
Hackers are making ATMs give away cash
According to this story the cybercriminals are hijacking the cash machines for stealing
the money off the consumers. The process of hijacking is named as jackpotting. The story of data
hijacking was identified but the victims are not really determined (Markoff, 2005). The cyber
criminals are mostly targeting the cash machines for stealing money of the consumers. In the
year of 2016, in more than 12 countries, the cash machines are attacked by the hijackers. The
similar kinds of incidents were also took place in Thailand and Taiwan.
Hacker ethics is a concept through which the actual hacking approach can be done
ethically (Coleman 2011). The hacker ethics of expression varies a lot with changing time period
(Sterling 2002). The set of hacker ethics those are defined widely in the current computing
application are as follows:
Information sharing is a very effective and powerful approach which is an ethical duty of
the hackers used to share through writing open source codes and access facilitating (Sheoran and
Singh 2014).
System hacking is sometimes found to be useful but in those cases where the data are
used without the permission of the users are called unethical (Schreuders and Ardern 2015). In
order to avoid these kinds of issues, hacker ethics are needed to be followed widely by the
hackers.
According to Radziwill et al. 2015 from ethical perspectives, the smaller gaps and the
issues in information sharing are required to be formulated through maintaining the hacker
ethics. From the ethical perspectives the mission and vision statement of any computing
operation and function are required to be followed properly by the hackers. Two different types
of hacking processes are there those are ethical hacking and unethical hacking. The field of
security and information resources is currently facing major level of threats due to unethical
hacking (Prasad and Manjula 2014). With the development of certain cyber security approaches
the issues of cyber crime is expected to be reduced or even resolves. However both the unethical
and ethical hacking is done by the person is known as hackers. The differences between the
ethical and unethical hacking are still an ongoing process. Though generally the term hacking is
assumed to be associated to the notion called illegal activity. The technology named as hacking

5HACKER ETHICS
is widely used either by the government or by medium to large business organizations. In order
to retrieve secret data from the company server these kinds of technologies are used by the
hackers. Based upon the type of performance the hackers are also differentiated in two categories
such as white hacking and black hacking (Prasad 2014) Currently, regardless of company’s name
the hacking technologies are used by the company owners. Through hacking the unwanted
information would be accessed easily by the hackers and the information resources could be used
eventually used whenever required. Ethical hacking is mainly done by the hackers behalf of the
companies whereas on the other hand, in order to search the loopholes of the security context, the
ethical hacking is done by the company representatives. In order to secure the infrastructure of
the companies the hacking technologies are applied widely in the business organizations. Again
for maintaining the confidentiality of the secret information hacking is used. Therefore, it can be
said that, based on the intension of the hackers, hacking are done for business purposes and
organizations. With the growing demand of ethical hacking many universities are currently
offering courses on ethical hacking.
Due to the eventual growth of hacking, the large business organizations have started
improving their existing security status. Many cyber security technologies are there those are
widely used by the business organizations for securing their confidential data and data server as
well. Cryptography, application firewall, DMZ etc are the current security technologies those are
widely used by the business organizations for securing their data from hacking.
Origin of hacking
The term “hacker” could be defined in two different ways:
Firstly, hacker can be defined as a person who can do proper computer programming,
computing operation, functions and even networking.
Secondly, hackers are those who use their computing skills and knowledge to access
those systems which are not authorized to them. In order to cause problems, delay, lack of access
in a system hackings are done (Prasad, 2014.)
The origin of hacking is evaluated in the year of 1955 and 1960 in Tech Model Railway
Club MIT University. They defined themselves as self deprecating hackers who migrates their

6HACKER ETHICS
interest in the new lab of MIT. In the year of 1955 and 1960s the computer times were expensive
and professionalized. The TMRC gave unauthenticated access to the users.
Details of hacker’s ethics:
 The users must have unlimited access to the computers and are always found to be
better than the hands on.
 Considering all the components of hacking essential lessons should be learned by
the hackers
 The lists of information are to be free enough from the user’s aspect
 Decentralization approaches are promoted by the mistrust authorities
 All skills and knowledge of the hackers should always be judged based on their
ability of hacking
 Beauty of hacking can be increased with high level code
It can be said that hacker ethics is not a linear proscribed set of practices and tenets. The
status of the system can reinforce and even disrupt the computing system and technology as well
(Prasad and Manjula 2014). Hacker ethics is an expression for the American values and cultural
politics.
Different hacking approaches
Ethical hackers are referred to as the computer and networking person who uses different
techniques to penetrate the computing system and networks systematically behalf of the business
owners. Based upon the background of the business organizations the attacks are done by the
computer hackers. Cyber attacks are the vulnerability exploitation. The different types of hacking
approaches taking place in the business organizations are as follows:
Malware attack: Malware attack is can be of different types such as Trojan attack,
viruses and worms. It helps the hackers to steal data from the server without the permission of
the server owner. It not only hijacks information but also it misuses and destroy the data. The
malware attacks are generally introduces through email attachments, software downloading,
operating system vulnerabilities etc (Sterling 2002). In order to avoid the issues of cyber attack
the users should not click on the links or attachment send from the unknown users. In addition to

7HACKER ETHICS
this, through the implementation of application firewall and up to date security updates the attack
from the malware could be prevented easily. It could prevent the issues of transfer of large data
files. With the help of proper software updated programs the malware attacks could be avoided.
Phishing attack: Phishing attacks are also done through the email attachments and links
as well. If the users click on the links then the user’s information would be easily hacked by the
attackers (Rathore 2015). In order to avoid the third party attack issues, all the dummy sites are
needed to be avoided by the users.
Password attack: In order to keep the data server secured from the hackers it is
necessary for the users to build proper as well as strong password to avoid the attack from the
unauthenticated users. Cryptography is the most widely used algorithm that helps the users to
keep their data secured from the external users.
DDOS attack: These kinds of attacks are mainly focused to the network disruption. In
order to retrieve information from the data server of different business organizations, the hackers
uses DDOS attack. In case of this kinds of attacks the attackers send huge volume of data files to
create within the network (Sagala, Silalahi and Manurung 2015). In order to prevent the issue of
DDOS attack, online security monitoring and controlling approaches are needed to be used by
the users. It is expected that with the help of technologies like encryption, firewall, DMZ the
unauthenticated users will not be able to access data from the server.
Examples of famous hackers
Black hat: This is an associated group which is consists of many members from all over
the world and they are connected to each other through different online messages and social
networking forums. All the members are responsible to encourage the civil disobedience like
Denial of Services (DOS), spoofing eon personnel information.
Jonathan James: This person is well-known for stealing software codes and for his
hacking into the defense threat reduction.
Adrian Lamo: This person is known for his high level network hacking of different large
business organizations such as yahoo, Microsoft security flaws, the New York Times etc.

8HACKER ETHICS
Kevin Mitnick: This person is convicted for infiltration of many criminal computer
crimes. After serving many years in prison, Mitnick founded a cyber security firm for helping
businesses and network safe.
White hat:
Tim Berners –Lee: This person is known for the invention of World Wide Web
(WWW), HTML, and URL system.
Vinton Cerf: The “Father of Internet” who has been highly instrumental for creating ad
using the concept of internet.
Dan Kaminsky: This person is well known for his best practices in uncovering the Sony
BMG copy protection rootkit scandal.
Ken Thompson: This is the co-creator of UNIX operating system
Donald Knuth: In the field of computer programming and theoretical computer science,
he is one of the most influential person.
Larry Wall: He is the creator of a high level programming language PERL.
Ethical theories applied for hacking
Ethical hacking is widely used to find out the weakness as well as vulnerabilities in
systems and in computer networks. It helps to describe the hacking procedure in an ethical way.
Hacker’s ethics is a belief which implies that information sharing is a very powerful as well as
positive good. It is an ethical duty of the hackers to spread their expertise through writing
different open source codes and facilitating access to the information and to the computing
resources whenever possible.
The approach of system hacking for both fun and exploration is ethically appreciable
until the hackers do not commit theft, vandalism and confidentiality breach.
However both of these ethical principles are wide but not accepted by the hackers.
The constituents of ethical hacking

9HACKER ETHICS
Hacking is also required to be done ethically and the list of rules they must obey include
the followings:
 In order to identify the potential security risk of any business organization proper
permission for probing the network should have to be done
 Respect for every individual and privacy of a company should be maintained by
the hackers
 Both the software developers and hardware manufacturer should be known by the
company
Conclusion
From the overall discussion it can be concluded that, in order to identify the potential
threats either on networks or on computers it is necessary both the terms ethical hacking and
ethical hackers are used. Malicious hackers are responsible to bypass the system security. In
order to improve the system security it is necessary for the business owners to reduce the threats
of potential attacks. With the concept of ethical hacking the different issues of business and
organizations could be minimized easily. Even during hacking the hackers are required to follow
certain rules and regulations. The constituents of ethical hacking and ethical theories to be
applied into hacking are elaborated in this essay. In addition to this, the profits of instructional
hacking are illustrated in this essay. Different types of attacks are there such as DDOS, man in
the middle, phishing, spoofing etc and all of these attacks could create major issues in the
existing security of the business organizations. Hacking is discriminated in two different
categories such as ethical hacking and unethical hacking. However, in any type of hacking the
hackers should maintain certain principles of ethics. All the principle of hacker ethics are
elaborated in this essay. In addition to this, from the entire discussion it has been concluded that,
yes, there is existence of hackers ethics and different recent reality news of hacking are also
represented in this essay.

10HACKER ETHICS
References
Allen-Robertson, J. 2013 Digital culture industry: a history of digital distribution, Basingstoke:
Palgrave Macmillan. Chapter 7 ‘Hacking the Market’. Coleman, G. (2009). CODE IS SPEECH:
Legal Tinkering, Expertise, and Protest among Free and Open Source Software Developers.
Cultural Anthropology, 24(3), 420–454. doi:10.1111/j.1548-1360.2009.01036.x
Baloch, R., 2014. Ethical hacking and penetration testing guide. CRC Press.
Behera, M.P.C. and Dash, M.C., 2015. Ethical Hacking: A Security Assessment Tool to Uncover
Loopholes and Vulnerabilities in Network and to Ensure Protection to the System.
Coleman, E.G. 2011. Anonymous: From the Lulz to Collective Action. The New Everyday: A
Media Commons Project. Retrieved from
http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/tne/pieces/anonymous-lulz-collectiveaction
Coleman, E.G. 2013 Coding freedom : the ethics and aesthetics of hacking, Princeton: Princeton
University Press.
Coleman, E.G., and Golub, A. 2008. Hacker practice: Moral genres and the cultural articulation
of liberalism. Anthropological Theory, 8(3), 255–277. doi:10.1177/1463499608093814
Gupta, A. and Anand, A., 2017. Ethical Hacking and Hacking Attacks. International Journal Of
Engineering And Computer Science, 6(4).
Hartley, R.D., 2015. Ethical hacking pedagogy: An analysis and overview of teaching students to
hack. Journal of International Technology and Information Management, 24(4), p.6.
Lakhani, K.R., and Wolf, R. 2005 ‘Why Hackers do What they Do: Understanding Motivation
and Effort in Free/Open Source Software Projects’ in Feller J. (ed.) Perspectives on free and
open source software, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Levy, S. 2001Hackers, Heroes of the Computer Revolution, London: Penguin.
Li, M., 2009. Pirate Party and the Pirate Bay: How the Pirate Bay Influences Sweden and
International Copyright Relations, The. Pace Int’l L. Rev., 1. Retrieved from

11HACKER ETHICS
http://heinonlinebackup.com/hol-cgibin/get_pdf.cgi?handle=hein.journals/
pacinlwr21&section=11
Markoff, J. 2005 What the Dormouse Said: How the sixties Counter-Culture Shaped the Personal
Computer Industry, London: Penguin Books.
Powell, A. 2016. Hacking in the public interest: Authority, legitimacy, means, and ends. New
Media & Society. doi:10.1177/1461444816629470
Prasad, M. and Manjula, B., 2014. Ethical Hacking Tools: A Situational Awareness. Int J.
Emerging Tec. Comp. Sc. & Elec, 11, pp.33-38.
Prasad, S.T., 2014. Ethical hacking and types of hackers. International Journal of Emerging
Technology in Computer Science & Electronics (IJETCSE), 11, pp.24-27.
Radziwill, N., Romano, J., Shorter, D. and Benton, M., 2015. The Ethics of Hacking: Should It
Be Taught?. arXiv preprint arXiv:1512.02707.
Rathore, N., 2015. Ethical Hacking and Security Against Cyber Crime. i-Manager's Journal on
Information Technology, 5(1), p.7.
Sagala, A., Silalahi, F. and Manurung, E., 2015. SCADA Network Delineation Plant
Assessments. Advanced Science Letters, 21(11), pp.3444-3448.
Satapathy, S. and Patra, R.R., 2015. Ethical Hacking. International Journal of Scientific and
Research Publications.
Schreuders, Z.C. and Ardern, L., 2015. Generating randomised virtualised scenarios for ethical
hacking and computer security education: SecGen implementation and deployment.
Sheoran, P. and Singh, S., 2014. Applications of Ethical Hacking. International Journal of
Enhanced Research in Science Technology & Engineering, 3(5), pp.112-114.
Sterling, B. 2002 The Hacker Crackdown: Law and Disorder on the Electronic Frontier, McLean
VA: Indypublish. Available from http://www.gutenberg.org/files/101/101-h/101-h.htm