Why Hackers are Great
I’d like to start off by stating clearly that I, and everyone else here at Viper Apps, do not condone or accept un-ethical hacking. However, as well as most others within the tech industry, we do have a different view on the topic which you should know about.
The Misunderstanding
Please note that an ethical-hacker is an individual who formulates ways to stop hacking in a practical and legal manner with the motive of protecting our virtual world.
A recent conversation with an industry veteran has prompted me to voice this opinion. I don’t appreciate hacking, but I caught a glimpse of why this underworld is overlooked and at times not given the respect it actually deserves. After all, ‘one must respect one’s enemy’!
A hacker may well think that he is conducting research out of goodwill. Many may actually begin hacking in order to highlight vulnerabilities without being asked, simply to be helpful. Just so you know, vulnerabilities in your website are areas where hackers can gain access and disrupt your system maliciously. But a website owner with no tech experience, on hearing from a random email that someone has found areas where the site is open to attack tends immediately to think ‘Why me? Why did you search and target my website’!
The truth is that they didn’t TARGET you at all. They quite simply keyed in a specific sequence of gobbledygook which made Google or whatever search engine they were using, return back a huge, I mean, enormous list of all the websites which had that venerability.
How a Hacker is Made
In my personal view, people should really stick to their own business, that goes for every aspect of life. That’s just my opinion, of course, and some see poking their nose into another’s business as entirely acceptable – the ethical hacker vigilante, in this case.
Can you relate back to a time in childhood when you did something out of your own goodwill, only to find that you were in serious trouble? I once cleaned brand new wooden floors with Fairy Liquid and water, actually a whole lot of water and ruined thousands of pounds worth of material. My parents were furious! At least at the time.
“WHAT THEY OFFERED WAS THROWN BACK IN THEIR FACE”
Imagine having this mindset of goodwill regarding your hacking, then notifying the site owner about the problem to help him and reduce the sum of vulnerabilities in your virtual world. The owner reacts by being furious that you even DARED look into their personal possession and demands ‘why did you target me’!? I wouldn’t like my vulnerabilities highlighted, after all, not in my character nor in my website!
Your current vigilante ‘ethical-hacker’ is now insulted. Not just because of you, but because of every other individual whom they have previously approached to offer this helpful advice. They can’t win. What they have offered is thrown back in their face, likely with a highly negative attitude. And this, ladies and gentlemen, is how a hacker is made. One more altruistic techie is hacked off, and becomes an evil hacker!
Accepting Criticism Is to Move Forward
As humans we hate criticism. We hate to fail and cannot stand being told when something isn’t good enough. How can anyone on this planet expect to move forward if they can’t accept criticism? If you can’t, then be ashamed of yourself, what makes you believe that you’ve always got the answer?
Maybe if this kind of approach governed all our responses at least to this vigilante type of ethical-hacker, we wouldn’t have half as many cyber attacks. By keeping this open mind is going to allow you to stay ahead of the game, and be more appreciative for advice in areas which you do not understand.
The post What Causes Someone to Hack appeared first on Viperapps.