write my professional descriptive essay on hacking

write my professional descriptive essay on hacking

Exploring the Ethical Dimensions of Hacking: A Scholarly Examination

1. Introduction to Hacking and Its Evolution

Hacking and hacker culture today look very different than they did only 50 years ago. The study of hacking has its roots in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Tech Model Railroad Club, which coined the term “hack” in the late 1950s to refer to small technical pranks that could extend the capabilities of the club’s train sets. “Hacking” in the digital sense arose in the early 1960s at the nearby MIT Model Train Club, to be synonymous with acts of technological cleverness. To “hack” was to spend a substantial amount of time developing particular expertise, frequently to the point of obsession. The first computer hackers at MIT used their expertise to push the limits of early mainframe systems while staying within the law and narrowly adhering to MIT’s rules about what could and could not be done with its advanced computing machines after hours. However, hackers outside MIT also tested the limits of large computer systems, but the experiments of these “phone phreaks” (from “phone” and “freak,” other words that took on new meanings in the 1960s) were in categorical violation of the law.

This is the big split between contemporary hackers and hacking culture. In the mid-to-late 1960s, the word “hack” began to take on its modern meaning through the founders of the Tech Model Railroad Club and their friends. “Hacking phenomenology” added in 2005, due to extensive study of hacker mailing lists in the 1990s and 2000s, suggests that hacking is a complex nexus of sometimes-dishonest activities that nevertheless frequently entertain and enlighten very sizable audiences. The word’s considerable morphological instability means that a 1959 “hack” could refer to either “buying a bunch of old telephone equipment and using it to build stuff at home” (legal) or “placing a carefully timed emergency call to a telephone company’s intercept receiver from a New York City street corner and racing uptown to eavesdrop on the stunned phone company workers” (definitely illegal).

2. The Ethical Dilemmas of Hacking

Hacking is the practice of modifying the features of hardware or software, defeating or bypassing device security measures, and sometimes stealing or securing data without authorization. Hacking is not only controversial in practice, but the ethical permissibility of hacking is also hotly debated due to how people perceive it. This makes hacking the perfect subject to be examined from the perspective of metaethics, normative ethics, and applied ethics.

Proponents of hacking are not necessarily wrong in their arguments that hacking can sometimes be a force for good. However, hacking’s detractors are not necessarily wrong either. On the other hand, with such a variety of motivations and subjects of action that are at the crux of the arguments in the contemporary discussion on computer hacking, it would be egregious if narrow definitions predicated an overlook of certain kinds of hacking that, in fact, are greatly linked to and can facilitate the express or implied goals of hacking’s most vociferous opponents. The folksy wisdom is that one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter, and the same is true about hackers; rather than define them as good or evil tout court, the ethical stakes involved in hacking must be evaluated in the context of the individual or collective making them. It is not that all hacking has deontological status: clearly, if a hacker takes advantage of an attacker’s information to, for example, blackmail the attacker, the hacker is still doing something wrong even though they are themselves an ameliorative hacker.

3. Hacking in the Context of Cybersecurity and Privacy Laws

Hacking and Law Enforcement. Hacking can also intersect with cybersecurity and privacy laws. Companies, non-profit organizations, and local, state, and federal U.S. government actors are tasked with implementing and enforcing privacy protection mechanisms that safeguard the rights of the digitally connected public. In the U.S., relevant cybersecurity laws include the Cybersecurity Enhancement Act of 2014, the National Cybersecurity Protection Advancement Act of 2016, and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Act of 2018. Indeed, existing state and federal privacy laws – and some state hacking law – may apply to non-consensual hacks. Adding to the regulatory complexity, hacking as a method of securing unsecured systems, inflicting computer virus damage, or accessing private information is criminalized under various Computer Fraud and Abuse Acts at the federal and state level. This includes the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (1984); the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 (1994); the National Information Infrastructure Protection Act of 1996 (1996). Several are U.S.-specific, other international legal and treaty language is used. Overall, the international code of hacking is multifaceted and sometimes conflicting. Public and private actors are partly tasked with policing these laws.

Therefore, for some hackers preferring illegal or legal methods, hacking is an underexamined morally controversial act. The criminalization or authorization of hacking assesses the potential negative and positive impacts on hacking act actors and objects. There is a proven track record of private sector hacking petitioning for policy change based on specific use-case results. Equally, there are examples where white-hat hacking has empowered law enforcement agencies to criminalize a particular method of network security implementation, blitzing defenders with millions of network vulnerabilities. While some ethical actions relate to the intention or end-impact measured against the law, this section will provide a nuanced view of the hacking legislative security landscape alternative. Seems to fall mainly in one of the six primary categories defined so far: individualist benefit, individualist damage, and offense-defense strategy.

4. The Role of Ethical Hacking in Information Security

The term “hacking” is strongly associated with cybercrime, which often results in damages worth millions of dollars. However, as we live in a digital world, it is of primary importance that every system should be secure because the insecurity of any system can result in major damages, not just to the organization that owns it but also to the people and organizations interacting with these systems. Ethical hacking, as a practice of probing the digital systems to enhance its security and boarding up all its vulnerabilities, gained acceptance in the form of the Certified Ethical Hacking course from the EC-Council in 2003. This chapter looks at ethical hacking in light of information security. It looks at ethical hacking as a proactive approach to fortify the digital systems, considering its importance as a part of information security practices for various organizations.

Ethical hackers have been serving companies’ stability. They have also been the mainstay of R&D labs and assessment tools’ designers. The resultant improvement in security awareness has had a positive bearing on the information security domain. Thus, the role of an ethical hacker should not be dismissed as unimportant. Even though hacking is regarded as a criminal activity, it is practiced for fun, adventure, and to show off one’s technical skills, endowing honor on knowledge in a world of jealousy and insecurity. Any attempt to ethical hacking should be stopped since by using this term only, what might happen is the legalizing of the illegal hacking. If the defenders of hacking asked one question, it would be whether this would set a precedent to legalize other illegal activities in the world. Certainly, ethical hacking permits all the acts which are against a government – anarchy, rebellion, and attacking the cops with all different means. Moreover, those considerations would not eliminate unethical hacking. Ethical hacking should be preached to the public in an indirect way. These suggestions inform the public rather than telling the public what to do. An example of a way to inform others about the ethical aspects of hacking could include an article in a computer magazine about ethical hacking. A computer club could market the magazine itself. However, care must be exercised when talking about ethical hacking to others in need of help. Let the public know that we are not in support of illegal hacking. Everyone involved should have the right to be heard, including the unethical hackers. However, if anyone disagrees with us, we should go to the book and see for ourselves. Ethical hackers, on the other hand, do not have the same privilege because of their dishonest nature. Everyone is entitled to privacy, but within the law. For instance, a company’s server setup could be scanned for weaknesses and then exploit them, even allowing it to be a matrix to delete the content of the server. They may be caught at this point. But the act of breaching the law by accessing others’ data cannot be classified as ethical, no matter which way the hacker tries to see it.