The Unofficial Guide to Ethical Hacking - Softcover

Fadia, Ankit

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1931841721 ISBN 13: 9781931841726

Publisher: Cengage Learning PTR, 2002

Synopsis

The Unofficial Guide to Ethical Hacking is much more than a guide to hacking. For anyone interested in finding out how your fail-safe system was cracked and how you can better protect yourself, this book is a must-read. It contains helpful resources that you can reference to better protect your system from becoming the victim of attacks. It also includes discussion on the nature of file encryption, firewalls, and viruses and shows how users can make their systems more secure.

About this title

About the Author:

Ankit Fadia is an independent computer security consultant based in Silicon Valley. He has authored several internationally best-selling books on numerous topics related to computer security, and he is a widely recognized computer security guru and cyberterrorism expert. Fadia provides customized cybersecurity training and consulting solutions to major clients all across North America, Asia, Australia, and the Middle East. He is also regularly invited by BBC Radio World News to share the latest updates on virus outbreaks, loopholes, and cybercrime trends. Recently, Fadia started his own computer security consulting and mobile phone solutions company based in Malaysia, with operations all across the Asian Pacific region.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

‘Hacking' and ‘Hackers' are terms that generally tend to have a negative effect on people. Most people straightway start associating ‘Hackers' with computer criminals or people who cause harm to systems, release viruses, etc. And I do not blame them for holding such a negative opinion. You see, one tends to accept what is being fed to him. And nowadays the media has been wrongly and outrageously referring to computer criminals as ‘Hackers'. They fail to recognize the fact that criminals and hackers are two totally distinct terms and are not associated with each other whatsoever. People have wrong notions and for reasons not justified at all, they have a negative attitude and utter dislike for ‘Hackers' and persons associated with ‘Hacking'.

The description of ‘Hackers' provided by the media is nowhere near what hackers actually stand for. Hackers in reality are actually good, pleasant and extremely intelligent people, who by using their knowledge in a constructive manner help organizations to secure documents and company secrets, help the government to protect national documents of strategic importance and even sometimes help justice to meet its ends by ferreting out electronic evidence. Rather, these are the people who help to keep computer criminals on the run.

Mr. Malik works as a programmer in a Fortune 500 company. When I first presented the idea of writing a book on ‘Hacking' and expressed my support towards ethical hackers, his reaction was one, of profound disbelief and resentment. He argued that teaching people to hack would only increase the incidence of computer crimes and bluntly stated that instead, more laws against hacking (well, actually cracking) should be introduced. He believed that I was crazy and said that he was against my site and book. Well, his strong and blunt opinions are petty much understandable as he was once cheated of his Internet hours, and since then his thoughts about hackers have been quite . . . well, let me put it lightly in a single word: ‘Unpleasant'.

Since the time the ape shed his hair and stood upright, man has been utilizing those objects which could cause harm to other humans to protect him when the need arises. The invention of the nuclear bomb or weapons as simple as knives immediately come to mind when one thinks of typical examples.

One evening, I was watching a TV program on vaccines and how they have been such a boon to the human race. The discovery of vaccines has been the greatest thing that could have happened in the medical world. Vaccines have helped to save millions of lives. But what struck me most was the description on how they actually work. Vaccination is like fighting evil with evil for positive gains.

The biggest problem that NASA and its team of engineers faced in all its space missions is that of disposing human wastes and providing and storing pure drinking water for the crew aboard. A young biologist suggested, ‘Human wastes be converted into pure drinking water by passing it through advanced chemical processes.' At first, his colleagues had been dismissive of this rather strange idea. However, later after some detailed and animated discussions, they concluded that using the negative non-useful elements to get something good and useful was their best bet.

History has shown that to eradicate or to protect against harmful elements, one needs to get some of these harmful elements onto his side and only then declare war. Let me assure you that history does and will repeat itself.

All the laws in the world cannot and will not discourage computer criminals. Crackers are getting real smart these days and it is becoming increasingly easier for them to break into a system, create havoc and escape without leaving any trace behind. Laws are absolutely useless when system administrators themselves are becoming ignorant of computer security and are dismissing all hackers as people belonging to the dark side of society. It has become absolutely necessary to teach people as to how crackers work, how cracking is executed and how to protect computer systems from crackers. If this is not done soon, then the crackers will get way ahead in the security race. And we really don't want this to happen, do we?

Wouldn't Mr. Malik have been able to protect his Internet account (and have a better opinion about hackers) if he had been more aware of how computer criminals work. If we were able to learn and understand how someone can break into our system, then wouldn't we have ensured that the security loophole is fixed even before the cracker strikes. Right? All I want to say is that instead of being resentful and afraid of fire, it would be much better, if we learn to live with fire and fight fire with fire itself.

About this edition

• Publisher: Cengage Learning PTR
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 1931841721
• ISBN 13: 9781931841726
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 752