Himanshu Guru
Hacking seems to have a perverse charm of its own, given that only extremely skilled and intelligent people with extremely evil intentions make good hackers. However, the practice by itself is not immoral, say techies…
With ransomware, claimed to be the biggest cyber assault to have struck state agencies and major companies in Russia, the UK and large parts of Asia including India, cyber security experts have got into a huddle to patch computers and restore infected systems. The rapid spread of the virus WannaCry has infected computers in more than 150 countries. The need to keep data safe and secure is a pressing one indeed that calls for technical ingenuity of the highest level in a closely connected digital world. Orissa POST chats with cyber experts based in India’s IT hub, Bangalore, about the different facets of hacking and its uses and abuses.
“Hackers, like other predators, attack the weakest prey. Hence, it is suggested that you should keep your security measures strong so that they have to find another victim,” says Abhilash Mishra, an Oriya UX Designer who lives in Bangalore.
“As an end user, we need to make a few things sure. We must keep ourselves updated and gather sufficient knowledge about how to avoid being hacked. The best thing to achieve this status is to use software bought from reliable sources. Also, refrain from browsing these suspicious sites and don’t open email attachments if you are unsure about the source. Finally, using a very strong password is the best practice to avoid being hacked,” he adds.
“Technology is growing fast and will continue to do so. With technological development, it is vital to separate the many faces of technology. In a digitally connected world nothing is secure and all systems are vulnerable. Hackers find out ways of entering a system, irrespective of their intentions. It has become a general perception that hackers are unscrupulous criminals. Whereas people with the same level of knowledge and skill sets (ethical hackers) are employed by organisations to keep track of their networks.”
So, is hacking inherently unethical? “That is not so,” says Adarsh Salima, a senior graphics designer. He explains, “Hacking isn’t supposed to be wrong. The word has been used incorrectly so many times that it has slowly taken on a negative meaning. Even most dictionaries use the negative definition, hence the belief that the practice is wrong. Hacking and “ethical hacking” don’t have separate meanings.”
“By definition, hacking is getting unauthorised access to someone else’s device,” adds Salima. “It is gaining unauthorised access and therefore wrong. It is similar to stealing someone else’s property. Hacking originally meant doing something brilliant on a computer, like writing 1 line instead of 100 lines of a code to achieve the same effect, but sadly that’s not the accepted definition anymore. The right word should be cracking.”
“There are several companies that hire hackers to break into their systems. This is for the sake of “vulnerability assessment”. Large companies such as Facebook, Twitter and Google have something called “bounty programs” which pay individuals who can break into their apps through hacking. Of course, in these cases, you do not use the hack to do anything bad, but report and get paid for it. You can even get listed in their “hall of fame” as an honourable member. So, nowadays hackers are divided into “white hats”, “black hats” and “grey hats” just to avoid confusion over whether the practice is legal or not.”
Avipsa, a graphics designer based in Bangalore, says hacking is associated with a bunch of complicated issues related to morality. “One first needs to understand a hacker’s mind. One can easily assume that s/he is intelligent and highly skilled in computer. In fact, breaking a security system requires more intelligence and expertise than actually creating one. There are no hard and fast rules to categorise hackers into neat compartments. White hat professionals hack in order to check their own security systems and to make it hack-proof.
In most cases, they are part of the same organisation. Black hat hackers hack to take control over a system for personal gain. They destroy, steal or even prevent authorised users from accessing the system. They do this by finding loopholes and weaknesses in the system. Experts call them crackers instead of hackers. Grey hat hackers comprise curious people who have just about enough computer language skills to enable them to hack a system to locate potential loopholes in the network security system. Grey hats differ from black hats in the sense that the former notify the admin of the network system about the weaknesses discovered in the system, whereas the latter is only looking for personal gain. All kinds of hacking are considered illegal barring the work done by white hat hackers,” she says.
