Ethical hacking is Legal or not ?

Question

ETHICAL_HACKING

Answer 1

Ethical hacking means you have the permission of the authority to hack something. And you are hacking it to improve the thing, not doing damage to it.

So yes, ethical hacking is legal.
This is why its called ethical hacking.

Answer 2

You have to sign the contract with the company before performing ethical hacking
Without contract it's completely illegal

Answer 3

All hacking is illegal unless you have signed an agreement (which is what ethical hacking is.)

Answer 4

When it comes to the legality of accessing property (of any kind) that DOES NOT belong to you, always assume that it is ILLEGAL.. UNLESS! you have permission from the owner of said property.

If you are still confused, just ask yourself this:

"If someone did whatever it is that you are inquiring about to you, with/without your prior consent, would you be upset?"

If you answered yes (you would get upset), then chances are, whatever that was done is most likely illegal..

If you need a case example, take a look at Adrian Lamo. He stumbled on a loop hole in the New York Times' website. He didn't do anything malicious with the information. He told them about it.. And he ended up getting fucked.. Charged and was used to make an example out of..

He wasn't even trying to find a loophole.. I think he just stumbled on it by accident... Either or, he had good intentions, but the New York Times decided to press charges.

Hope that answers your question.

Answer 5

Ethical hackers are paid by companies to secure their data/servers/etc. So ethical hacking is completely legal. It is the procedure taken to protect the computer system of other BAD hackers 😊

Answer 6

Ethical hacking is done to improve security of website.

It's better to have a hacker on our side to check loopholes instead of having a hacker who wants to exploit the loopholes.

So it's like challenging a hacker under contract to break through our security and tell us how he did it.

Answer 7

Aditya Rana That's not how I interpret the term "Ethical Hacking". To me, that's grey hat hackers. Someone who is pentesting a system without having prior permission.

If you are hired by a company to find all the flaws, I would group those guys as white hat hackers..

Let me put it this way: if you were hired by a company to test their system, find and report back to the company the exploits that you find, and someone asks you what you do for a living, what would you say?

A) I am an ethical hacker so XYZ Company?
Or
B) I am a system's administrator / Pentester for XYZ Company

Now same question, but for someone who goes around looking for systems with exploits that they can hack like Batman roaming around Gotham looking for badguys to catch.. What would they answer.. Most likely B right?

Just saying.. That's just my opinion..

Not saying yours is wrong or anything. Just felt the urge to chime in.