Is Ethical Hacking Legal in India?

Описание: #EthicalHacking #CyberCops
Generally speaking the word “hacking” has negative appeal, but ethical hackers use their skills in constructive manner to protect organizations from malicious black hat hackers.

Hacking in common parlance is understood as unauthorized access to a computer or network. In most of the cases, hackers leverage the vulnerabilities including zero day vulnerabilities to accomplish unauthorized intrusion. However, not all hacking are with mens rea i.e, bad intention. This is what differentiates ethical hacking from others. In this write up, we shall discuss what ethical hacking is and whether it’s legal in India.

Categories of Hackers:
Based on intention, hackers can be broadly divided into three categories, as below:

Category 1: White hat hackers: They are also known as ethical hackers. They use their computer skills to protect and secure the systems from malicious elements like black hat hackers. They are generally recruited by firms and government, and in turn are paid for exposing and rectifying the vulnerabilities found in the system. They breach into the system with prior authorization and are defenders of the virtual world.

Category 2: Black hat hackers: They are also known as crackers. They have malice in their hearts and hack into an entity for personal gains. They are evils of the virtual world, who are to be defended against.

Category 3: Grey hat hackers: They are ambivalent. They become white hat or black hat hacker as per the situation. As such, they are not trustworthy. In most situations they are self proclaimed ethical hackers.

What is Ethical Hacking?
We read bout white hat hackers, grey hats and finally black hats. While black hats intrude into the system with malice and without legitimate prior authorization, white hats are complete opposite. They are recruited by individuals and corporate for specific task of ethical hacking, and thus work with prior consent and has good intention.

Black hat hackers aim to cause wrongful loss to the entity being compromised. For example, data breaches. Here, hackers compromise the data stored within the systems of an organization and then either force the entity to pay ransom or sell the data on underground forums like DarkNet. In few other cases, hackers simply paste the sensitive personal information so gathered on sites like Pastebin.

On the other hand, ethical hacking is meant to contain the fallouts of black hat hacking, and the person recruited for the purpose is called ethical hacker. In most aspects both are same as underlying principles and fundamentals remain the same. But the difference lies in the consent and intention.

Hacking can cause irreversible and irreparable loss to an organization. It includes loss of faith of public in the institution, legal liability in terms of monetary compensation for data theft (for example under European Union, Global Data Protection Rules), lowering of values of shares, loss of customers/ users etc.

Ethical hackers on the other hand, showcase the exploits and vulnerabilities of the systems. It enables security officers to patch the vulnerabilities, before black hat hackers exploit it for personal gains. Thus, ethical hackers make the system more safe and secure by addressing the issues in the networks and systems.

Ethical Hacking Decoded Further:
Ethical hacking is the study of vulnerabilities and weaknesses of a system/ network with prior consent of the owner, by cyber security experts. The study finds and exposes the probable ways to hack the system. If so found, the person responsible for cyber security, patches the exploits before it can be hacked by black hat hackers.

Thus, ethical hacking is constructed as good hacking.

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