Ethical Hacks

Ethical hacking and ethical hacker are terms used to describe hacking performed by a company or individual to help identify potential threats on a computer or network. An ethical hacker attempts to bypass system security and search for any weak points that could be exploited by malicious hackers. This information is then used by the organization to improve the system security, in an effort to minimize or eliminate any potential attacks.

What constitutes ethical hacking?

In order for hacking to be deemed ethical, the hacker must obey the following rules:

1. Expressed (often written) permission to probe the network and attempt to identify potential security risks.
2. You respect the individual's or company's privacy.
3. You close out your work, not leaving anything open for you or someone else to exploit at a later time.
4. You let the software developer or hardware manufacturer know of any security vulnerabilities you locate in their software or hardware, if not already known by the company.

The term "ethical hacker" has received criticism at times from people who say that there is no such thing as an "ethical" hacker. Hacking is hacking, no matter how you look at it and those who do the hacking are commonly referred to as computer criminals or cyber criminals. However, the work that ethical hackers do for organizations has helped improve system security and can be said to be quite effective and successful. Individuals interested in becoming an ethical hacker can work towards a certification to become a Certified Ethical Hacker, or CEH. This certification is provided by the International Council of E-Commerce Consultants (EC-Council). The exam itself costs about $500 to take and consists of 125 multiple-choice questions in version 8 of the test (version 7 consisted of 150 multiple-choice questions).


Before commissioning an organization or individual, it is considered a best practice to read their service-level and code of conduct agreements covering how testing will be carried out, and how the results will be handled, as they are likely to contain sensitive information about how the system tested. There have been instances of "ethical hackers" reporting vulnerabilities they have found while testing systems without the owner's express permission. Even the LulzSec black hat hacker group has claimed its motivations include drawing attention to computer security flaws and holes. This type of hacking is a criminal offence in most countries, even if the purported intentions were to improve system security. For hacking to be deemed ethical, the hacker must have the express permission from the owner to probe their network and attempt to identify potential security risks.