Is Hacking Ethical? By John K French At Isnare.com Ezine Articles

This article is meant for all of those who have heard of Hacking. Most of you think that hacking is illegal, an immoral activity. Hacking is defined as increasing capacity of a device such that it can perform actions other then those defined and intended. It may also mean to take control of other machines. A hacker is a person who initiates this action and is extremely knowledgeable in computer programming.

Hacking has got bad name due to few people, organizations and media. Some of the hackers chose to use their knowledge to disrupt computers, steal information and gain illegal access. The motive was to hurt and steal. Most of the genuine hackers are ethical and are put in their skills to find new ways and means to use software or hardware. Also Ethical hackers are used to test any vulnerability in software and plug them before non ethical hackers find it.

Some hackers cross the line but do not stray too far and are called Grey Hackers. Hacking has been around since computers came to use. People who hack into computers live in almost every country in the world. Hackers are normal people with extraordinary ability and knowledge. They succeed where other programmers fail. They find ways to twist rules, bend rules, break them and define new ones. They set new boundaries in software and hardware usage. Let us look at various types of hacking.

Types of Hacking:

1. Hacking for user information
2. Web based hacking.

Hacking for user information involves taking control of computer to extract information without the knowledge of actual owner. Web based hacking involves playing with a website. It will be interesting to look in each type of hacking.

Hacking for user information: To gain information most hackers use Phishing, Brute Force Method, Key loggers and Trojans. While phishing, hackers make a web page which is exact clone of the website their target will visit. When the target keys in, they redirect him / her, to their own web page. This new web page captures the details and passes it to hackers.

Brute Force Method involves attack using automated scripts which will try all possible combination. It takes time and computing power to succeed. This technique was used earlier for email passwords but now Image Capture trick used by most websites has rendered it useless.

Key loggers and Trojans are similar in action. These programs are sent to user computers and installed discretely. They send the information back to hacker. Once hacker receives your private information they use it for their personal benefit.

Web site hacking: Hackers use SQL Injection, XSS and Shells. SQL injection works for website which have SQL database at their backend. Using a parse command one can get in the information stored in these databases. Shells and XSS techniques work by twisting the content and cookies.

Though this information my sound malicious but it is presented so that you can safeguard your website and information against these basic attack types and use Internet without any problems.

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