Posted: December 6th, 2022

Hacking and Ethics

Hacking and Ethics
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Table of Content
Types of hackers……………………………………………………………………………..
Common methods of cyber-attacks used by hackers……………………………………….
Phases of ethical hacking……………………………………………………………………
Vulnerabilities which ethical hackers check for……………………………………………
The future of ethical hacking……………………………………………………………….
Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………….

Hacking and Ethics
Cybercriminals and attackers have employed hacking to exploit computer and network systems by gaining unauthorized access; however, hacking has been transformed to be ethical to enhance an organization’s safety and security. Hacking has been adopted to gain unauthorized access to computers or gain control over computer network security systems for malicious purposes such as stealing data, compromising data, or even damaging data at the users’ or an organization’s expense. On the other hand, ethical hacking entails having an authorized attempt to gain unauthorized access to a computer, network, data, and application with positive intentions of developing strategies, actions, and solutions to counter malicious attackers (Radziwill et al., 2015). The ethical hackers/white hats are composed of security experts that assess computer and network systems to establish weaknesses, gaps, and vulnerabilities to uphold high security and privacy standards. Therefore, hacking incorporates ethics to ensure that organizational computer and network systems are protected.
Types of hackers
There are different types of hackers based on their intentions and operations in hacking. The intention of a hacker determines their ethicality (Xu, Hu, and Zhang, 2013). In this regard, black hat hackers include persons with extraordinary computing skills, and they use the skills to implement malicious objectives such as destruction, compromising, or stealing data or systems.
The white hat hackers include the ethical hackers that use improved and advanced computing skills for defensive purposes. The ethical hackers establish gaps and vulnerabilities in the system and devise countering strategies (Xu, Hu, and Zhang, 2013). Therefore, ethical hackers strive to improve and uphold the security of comp0uter and network systems or applications.
The gray hat hacker entails the advanced computer users that use their hacking skills for both offensive and defensive purposes (Xu, Hu and Zhang, 2013). The Gray Hat Hackers are security consultants that have advanced skills and knowledge of hacking. In other words, the gay hat hackers are white hat hackers that operate as black hat hackers.
Common methods of cyber-attacks used by hackers
Hackers use different cyber-attack techniques or methods to gain access to a system or an application. In this case, malware attacks take malware or malicious software to execute unauthorized actions on the victim’s system. The hackers use different malware that includes spyware, ransomware, and command and controls (McGuire and Dowling, 2013). Therefore, the use of malware in systems and application to gains access and control them. The user system is accessed by malware through vulnerabilities, social engineering, brute-forced passwords, infected websites, or sending malicious emails, links, or attachments.
Hackers use social engineering cyber-attacks to launch attacks on systems and applications. Hackers consistently innovate social engineering space to develop new methods to manipulate users to believe that messages, attachments, or links are trusted and then infecting targeted malware systems (McGuire and Dowling, 2013). This approach gains hackers access to the system for malicious operations.
Hackers have used the credential compromise method to launch attacks on systems and applications. The credential compromise takes access to high-ranking employees’ passwords, such as managers or the system password (Macdonald et al., 2015). Upon access to the password, the hackers can access the systems and application for different purposes, both offensive and defensive.
The hackers use the DDoS attacks to gains access and control systems and applications. The DDoS approach entails a malicious attempt to disrupt normal traffic of a targeted server, network, or service by overwhelming the target or the surrounding infrastructure with a flood of internet traffic (Macdonald et al., 2015). The DDoS creates vulnerabilities that make it possible for hackers to access and exploit systems and applications.
Phases of ethical hacking
The ethical hacking phases provide an in-depth presentation about ethical hacking that includes reconnaissance, scanning, gaining access, maintaining access, and clearing tracks. In this regard, the reconnaissance stage is referred to, and the preparatory phase involves the hacker gathering information about their target before the launch of an attack. The reconnaissance stage is implemented in phases before the vulnerabilities in the system are exploited. The phases of the reconnaissance include dumpster diving, where the hackers gather sensitive and valuable information such as old passwords, names of critical employees and undertake active reconnaissance to establish the organization’s operation (Bansal and Arora, 2012). Consequently, the hacker moves to the footprinting stage that ensures that data is gathered from the security perspective, such as reducing focus areas such as establishing specific IT addresses, identifying vulnerabilities in the system, and developing a network map to establish the network infrastructure operations. The footprinting provides vital information such as passwords, system names, TCP and UDP services, and domain name. Moreover, other strategies can be adopted in footprinting, such as impersonating a website by mirroring it, using the information of the current employees’ data for impersonation, and using engines to establish information for the organization.
The scanning phase in ethical hacking identifies the quickest way to gain access to the network and access different information. This phase evaluates the easiest way to gain access to a system. The scanning phase can be implemented in three methods: information extraction, port scanning/sniffing, and pre-attack (Bansal and Arora, 2012). The different methods are differentiated by the set of vulnerabilities adopted by the hackers in exploiting the system’s weaknesses. In the pre-attack phase, the hacker scans the network for specific information based on the reconnaissance information. The port scanner or the sniffing phase scanning involves the port scanners, dialers, vulnerability scanners, and other data-gathering equipment. Additionally, the extraction phase takes the attackers collecting information concerning ports, OS details, and live machines to launch an attack.
The gaining access phase takes the hacker making accessing the network, application, and systems (Mukhopadhyaya and Nath, 2014). The access to the computer and network systems inclines the hacker to seek a prolonged stay in control by escalating the privileges to ensure they effectively control the system they are connected to.
The ethical hacker moves to maintain access to the system to exploit it further. The hacker secures access to Trojans and Rootkits’ organization and employs it in launching additional attacks on the network (Mukhopadhyaya and Nath, 2014). This fact ensures that the hacker can exploit the system as they progress to gain the highest control levels that the attackers can achieve.
Additionally, the hacker takes the covering of tracks when they gain access to avoid detection. The covering of the track ensures that the hacker can favorably escape the security personnel. The covering of tracks takes the clearing of the cache and cookies, closing the open ports, and tampering with the log files (Mukhopadhyaya and Nath, 2014). The covering of tracks step is vital as it clears the system information making it impossible to track the hacking operations.
Vulnerabilities that ethical hackers check for
The hackers implement hacking operation through the identification of vulnerabilities existing in the computer and network systems. The ethical hacker exploits the different vulnerabilities to resolve them before malicious attackers or hackers exploit them at the users or organization (Wang and Yang, 2017). In this regard, the vulnerabilities identified include broken authentication. The broken authentication as a vulnerability enables the user to bypass the authentication process on the web application or the system. In this case, the hacker can perform automated attacks such as credential surfing, where the ethical hacker test the broken authentication.
The ethical hackers use the security misconfiguration vulnerabilities to exploit the system and access it. The hackers can exploit security misconfiguration as a security posture and access the system (Wang and Yang, 2017). Organizations have a false notion that they operate in a secure environment while the security misconfiguration makes the system unsafe. Therefore, ethical hackers enhance the location of security gaps that result in serious threats.
The hackers use injection attacks to introduce vulnerabilities in the system; thus, they can get unauthorized access to the system. The injection attacks are broad attack vectors where the attacker injects untrusted input into the system. The code gets processed by the interpreter, thus altering the program’s execution (Wang and Yang, 2017). Therefore, the ethical hacker penetrates the system through a weak corner that makes it possible for the attacker to introduce the code.
The use of devices and components are known to have vulnerabilities by the attacker provides the attacker with a starting point for the attack. The developers ignore different vulnerabilities in the devices or components, and malicious attackers exploit them. The attackers use automated tools to identify vulnerable components. Therefore, hackers use the known and existing vulnerabilities in components to launch attacks.
Additionally, the attackers use the vulnerability of sensitive data exposure on a system to implement attacks. The sensitive data exposed, leading to attacks, include contact numbers, passwords, private health data, credit card details, and other personal and vital information (Imran, Faisal, and Islam, 2019). The exposure of sensitive and confidential data amounts to a potential data breach.
The future of ethical hacking
The ethical hacking field is consistently growing, as occasioned by the increased cyber-attacks and security breaches to individuals or organizational systems. Individuals and organizations using computers and network systems have constantly realized that ethical hackers are the real protectors of their systems and applications. The ethical hackers constantly evaluate the weaknesses and challenges in the system to adopt the relevant counter solutions. On the other hand, the hacking will experience challenges as occasioned by the rise of Artificial Intelligence hack attacks. The AI hack attacks are designed to hack systems and applications. Therefore, the systems will need to defend themselves from the AI hacks the same way as in advanced hacks.
Conclusion
Hacking has been ethically used to uphold and improve the security and privacy in systems and appli8cation by establishing the vulnerabilities, gaps, and weaknesses and working to eliminate them. Ethical hackers follow steps and procedures that unethical hackers or attackers would follow to exploit the available weakness. This approach enables ethical hackers to identify the vulnerabilities that are likely to be exploited. In this regard, the ethical hackers recommend counter solutions and strategies to effectively protect the system and applications.

References
Bansal, A., & Arora, M. (2012). Ethical hacking and social security. Radix International Journal of Research in Social Science, 1(11), 1-16.
Imran, M., Faisal, M., & Islam, N. (2019, November). Problems and Vulnerabilities of Ethical Hacking in Pakistan. In 2019 Second International Conference on Latest trends in Electrical Engineering and Computing Technologies (INTELLECT) (pp. 1-6). IEEE.
Macdonald, M., Frank, R., Mei, J., & Monk, B. (2015, August). Identifying digital threats in a hacker web forum. In Proceedings of the 2015 IEEE/ACM international conference on advances in social networks analysis and mining 2015 (pp. 926-933).
McGuire, M., & Dowling, S. (2013). Cyber crime: A review of the evidence. Summary of key findings and implications. Home Office Research report, 75.
Mukhopadhyay, R., & Nath, A. (2014). Ethical Hacking: Scope and challenges in 21st century. Int. J. Innov. Res. Adv. Eng.(IJIRAE), 1(11), 2349-2163.
Radziwill, N., Romano, J., Shorter, D., & Benton, M. (2015). The Ethics of Hacking: Should It Be Taught?. arXiv preprint arXiv:1512.02707.
Wang, Y., & Yang, J. (2017, March). Ethical hacking and network defense: choose your best network vulnerability scanning tool. In 2017 31st International Conference on Advanced Information Networking and Applications Workshops (WAINA) (pp. 110-113). IEEE.
Xu, Z., Hu, Q., & Zhang, C. (2013). Why computer talents become computer hackers. Communications of the ACM, 56(4), 64-74.

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