The White Hat: Are they reasonable for hacking?

2:45 AM ---


So as we back again to our previous topic about different kinds of hackers and what are their level, I’m going to share to you the mostly type of hat usually used in hacking community. This hat is the way how they recognize on how they behave on their hacking skills. 

Let’s start on White Hat. Before, I thought that hat are just something you wear as for style, for weather or if you just want to have hat on your head but when it comes to computer system and security as like for Linux and Red Hat, hat can be categorized into three – the White, Black and Grey Hat. White hat as a start for our topic are the ones who are considered as ethical hackers. There are lot of terms for white hat and based on the article from SecPoint: What is a White Hacker they are also known as sneakers, or even white knights. And from their definition, they are information and cyber security specialists who are well-versed in system examination, penetration testing, and many other network analysis approaches that guarantee the safety and integrity of many a company's information system. The sneakers appellation in particular refers to white hats who are actually employed by companies or organizations as network security professionals of sorts.

The National Security Agency (NSA) offers certifications to these hackers such as the CNS 4011, which covers professional and principled hacking techniques and team management. On that note, an entire group of these experts are referred to by the CNS 4011 as red teams or tiger teams if they're acting as aggressors or invaders, and as blue teams if they're acting as defenders or patch makers.

White Hat Hackers are known for their reasonable hacking on one’s system. They don’t want to harm or take advantage of the company or system they hack because they just want to share what they notice for the improvement of it and help without any change in return. It just about the company’s owner what action will he or she plan after knowing it from the white hats hacker. There are times, they recruit those white hat hackers and join to their team on the system and security department.

The idea about white hat and black hat was formulated in the presence of the black and white western genre of movies and television in which this white and black dichotomy is sometimes played out in the costuming, based on the wiseGEEK article what is White Hat? “White hats are a good person, a rescuer, a savior, or simply someone who upholds the law and does the right thing.”   

Black and white western genre of movies and television

There are lot of people who considered as white hat hackers. A slideshow about 12 "White Hat" hackers you should know by Ellen Messmer revealed some of them. For more info about it, you can click the hyperlink I include in the title and their pictures were also there for references.

Even in the Philippines, Raymond Nuñez is one of the white hat hacker or security professional. When the Cyber crime law was became the hit topic around the web he is one of those who helps companies defend against Internet attacks, says “some portions of the cybercrime law could be prone to abuse.” You can watch the video of it from ANC Presents: Cybercrime, October 10, 2012 ('White hat' hacker: Cybercrime law prone to abuse).

Hackers are not all mean. Sometimes, they just want to examine and experiment something that can contribute for future malwares and other issues about security. Imagine without those white hat hackers, do you think we can still have safe connection and privacy about our account credentials? Yeah we cannot say we have secured privacy but at least we can set it in terms we can still customize what we want to share to others or to everyone through web. It just a matter of appreciation to those ethical hackers because they also help other companies so they will know what specific task they should put more security to avoid system failure and destruction of their databases.

Apple Logo
Some of the biggest company hires white hat hackers on their company and one of them is Apple. There is a news about Apple hires white hat hacker who helped Microsoft probe and secure Windows Vista by The Next Web. You can read it for yourself since the link here can be accessible for everyone.

Control-Alt-Hack card game
While I’m reading and searching for other articles on the web that I can connect with my topic here, I found also an interesting site on which it is a card game but not just an ordinary game. This was released only last year and they called it Control-Alt-Hack: White hat hacking for fun and profit. Based on the article, Card game turns you into White Hat hacker by Alpha Doggs, “Although the new Control-Alt-Hack card game from a team of University of Washington computer scientists does expose you to enough computer security concepts that you probably will pick up a few learning along the way, and the game makers say it could be used in computer science classes to introduce students to security topics.” In this game, you and your fellow players work for Hackers, Inc., a small, elite computer security company of ethical (a.k.a., white hat) hackers who perform security audits and provide consultation services. Their motto? "You Pay Us to Hack You." You can read more of this on their site Control-Alt-Hack card website.

As I end the discussion about white hat hacker and move on our next blog post about black hat, we can learned from this articles that there are still some actions on which you cannot really determine if the white hat hackers are really white hat hackers or why the black hat hackers before become white hat hackers. Still it is just a matter of choice but as long as there is a professional ethics on how you do some things and skills you learned, hacking can be considered good in some different way.

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