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Ethics are principles of professionals conduct. Ethics is broader than what is stated by law, customs and public opinion. For example, accepting gifts

Nowadays any kind of information for every single person in the world is held in database somewhere in the world. Every company and organization works with, stores and uses personal information of some kind every day. This makes them responsible for its unassailability but because of the big number of the skilled IT professionals who have interest of stealing that information and use it for other purposes the companies cannot assure its safety.

This is where the ethical hackers and the ethical hacking comes in to play. They are employed by companies to test its system’s security. They use Ethical Hacking to penetrate the system in order to find any weaknesses that can be used to gain unauthorized access to the system.

What categories can hackers fall into?

There are three types of Hackers. The first one is the one that is known all around the world under the same name which is Hackers. The second one is Ethical hackers.

The third one that is widely confused with the hackers is Crackers.

The Hackers are passionate and enthusiastic programmers who believe in the freedom of sharing information as well as their experience by writing free software and facilitating access to information and computing resources wherever possible. [1]

Ethical Hackers or in other words computer security consultants are people who are using the information provided by the hackers as well as some extra skills, for defensive purposes.

These Crackers are people who take advantage of the hackers’ work and use the information provided from them for criminal purposes. Therefore the hacker community calls these destructive computer users crackers. [1]

As well as the solid understanding of programming languages, computer networks and operating system concept the ethical hackers (security consultants) must have variety of skills in order to make them reliable and trustful employees. Some of them have: Professional, Lawful / Legal, Patient, Methodical, Adaptable / Versatile, Good verbal / written communications, Efficient, Experienced, Interested in Technology, Team work, Logical Mind, Researching Skills, Business knowledge, Organized and Confident.

In my opinion, the most important skill is Honesty / Integrity, because in most of the cases while testing systems they will discover sensitive information for the client that can have negative impact of its business if published or if handled improperly. Professionalism and logical thinking are also critical for setting up the environment for testing such as remote network, using strong cryptography to protect electronic results and so on.

It is essential for them to have a lot of patience and self-drive to do their job properly, because some system may take up to several weeks to test, teamwork is a very beneficial skill to have because it helps to divide the workload.

There are many aspects that make computer knowledgeable person Ethical Hacker and some of them are:

• Ethics

• Moral

• Culture’s religious beliefs

• Social beliefs

• Economic beliefs

• Limitation of law

I will briefly discus these aspects individually to get better understanding of them and then I am going to discuss the impact that they may have in the life of the Ethical Hacker.

Ethic, morality and the link between them

What do we mean by Ethics?

“The field of ethics (or moral philosophy) involves systematizing, defending, and recommending concepts of right and wrong behaviour.” [2] More simply, one could say it is the study of what is right to do in a given situation.

What do we mean by Moral?

“Morality involves what we ought to do, right and wrong, good and bad, values, justice, and virtues. Morality is taken to be important, moral actions are often taken to merit praise and rewards, and immoral actions are often taken to merit blame and punishment.” [3]

Most of the people are facing ethical and moral challenges often in their everyday life but the ethical hackers are challenged with them all the time in their career. One example can be that, many hackers argue they follow an ethic that guides their behavior and justifies their break-ins. They indicate that all information should be free and therefore there is no such thing as intellectual property, and no need for security. [4]

From the other hand if all information should be free, the privacy will be no longer possible. Additionally, our society is based on information whose accuracy must be provided, hence free and unrestricted access to such information is out of the question. [4]

From security point of view actual break-ins illustrate security problems to a community that will not otherwise notice those very problems. This can be useful to a lot of companies that are responsible for very sensitive information. If we look at this problem from different moral prospect, if the vulnerability of the system is reported and explained to the administrators responsible for the security or the owner of the company that would illustrate the problem as well, which means breaking in cannot be justified. [4]

Should burglars be allowed to break into houses in order to demonstrate that door locks are not robust enough?

Other often excuse of the hackers is that they are simply making use of idle machines. Because a system is not used at its full capacity, the hacker is somehow entitled to use it.

Clearly, unauthorized person who get access to machine that is not his own property is not in position to properly qualify if the system is being used to the full of its capacity or not, because unused capacity is often present for future needs and sudden surges in system activity. [4]

Cultures religious beliefs

The links between Ethics and Morality in the life of ethical hacker is something very important. Although it may looks like the people using the same kind of religion should have the same understanding of Ethics that is not the case in most of the time. The Ethics is understood differently by every single person in the world. A lot of people believe all the religious in the world are identical and they teach us the same values of life, not to hurt other people and to live in peace with the nature. As many people know that this is not the case in reality, explicit example of that are the standoffs between some of the major religious groups in the world such as: Catholics and Protestant Christians, Sunni and Shi’a Muslims, and Orthodox and modern Jews. [5]

Social and economic beliefs

The brain in the human been is like the operation system of computer, it control and manages all the processes in the body. But the brain has no mechanism of discrimination, it cannot tell you what is relevant or less relevant except experience. Genetics has nothing to do with greed and business they do not control values, our behavior and values are reflective to the culture we are exposed to. [6]

Limitation of law

The law is what determines the boundary that anyone should work in. When it comes to computer crimes there is different law in every country around the globe, some of them do not even have such a law in place. I will briefly look at the UK Computer Misuse Act (1990) and Data Protection Act (1998). Because of the impact the local law can have, every ethical hacker who wants to operate in UK must be aware of what is classified as a legal, what as illegal and what are his/her rights. Some of the laws and the way they have been applied slightly changed since the Budapest Convention on Cybercrime that took place in 2001.

The Budapest Convention on Cybercrime is a place where representative from every country wishing to take a part are gathered to discuss the cyber problems. Its aim is to introduce common criminal policy, emphasize the importance of better investigative techniques and the importance of cooperation among nations. [7]

The convention on cybercrime divides the computer misuse to 6 main areas:

• Computer Fraud

• Computer Forgery

• Damage to Computer data or Computer Programs

• Computer Sabotage

• Unauthorized Access

• Child Pornography

Computer fraud – Any intentional input, amendment, removal or violation of computer data that influences the result of its processing and can cause loss of any kind is classified as computer fraud. [7]

Computer Forgery – Any intentional input, amendment, removal or violation of computer data that it would constitute the offence of forgery if it had been committed with respect to a traditional object of such an offence. [4]

Damage to Computer Data or Computer Programs mean deleting, damaging, infection or suppression of computer data or computer programs without right. [4]

Computer Sabotage means any manipulation to data with intention to hinder the functioning of a computer or a telecommunications system. [4]

Unauthorized Access is the access without right to a computer system or network by avoiding the security measures. [4]

Child Pornography involves producing, distribution, offering and making child pornography for the purpose of its distribution through a computer system for oneself or another person. [7]

Case study

R v Daniel Cuthbert, Horseferry Road, Magistrates Court, 07/10/2005, Computer Misuse Act 1990, s 1 Unauthorised access. IT security contractor Daniel Cuthbert, donates £30 to charity website, then decides to check it security. Mr. D. Cuthbert found guilty of unauthorized access, convicted and fined £400. [8]

If Mr. Cuthbert is to be believed that he just wanted to test the security without any back thoughts and free of charge theoretically he has not done anything bad, however from the law point of view this is wrong. Personal data or information cannot be accessed without authorization. This is good example that demonstrates that although the law and the ethics are based on the same principles they are applied differently in most of the time and also if something is good that does not make it right. This example illustrates very well the arguments and counterarguments between hackers, crackers and ethical hackers that I wrote about in page two.

Is it ethical to use entrapment as a means of detecting and capturing a Hacker?

In my personal opinion, based on my ethical and moral principles and on my social background there is nothing wrong to use honey pods or any other software and hardware for capturing hackers and cracker. The reasons I agree with the entrapment methods are simple. The first and most important one is that: to use entrapments of any type is legal according to the law in UK. Also this is opportunity for the police to prevent future accidents made by crackers and hackers, because if they fail to capture and identify hacker who is trying to steal some information from company or organization that can have big impact for the institution and bring big losses to it. This method is the ‘electronic version’ of double agent whose job is to identify and capture criminals in the moment when they are taking action to do something illegal. Last but not least as I discussed in page two, no one has the right to access and manipulate private information if it is not authorized to do so.

Conclusion

We often use the term “professional ethics” but what does that actually means? It means a list of laws, rules, and regulations that professionals are supposed to follow all the time in their careers. These rules, regulations and laws might be acceptable by many people, but that does not makes them objective moral standards that every professional should accept. In my opinion every profession has its own moral standards that are unique to it. There is no universal ethics and moral that everyone in the world is going to follow simply because of the number of cultures, religious and laws around the world, even two brothers that grow up together will have different view for moral and ethics, therefore the ethical hackers must always have very good understanding and working according to the law in the country that he/she is operating.

 

from father in law might be socially acceptable but not ethically.

Ethical behaviour may differ from society to society for example: birth control is mandatory in communist societies but not in catholic Christian society.

Ethical standards are ideals of human conduct. Defining ethical standards is not an easy task.

Ethics is the study of standards of conduct and moral judgment; moral philosophy, a treatise on this study. Thus we say that ethics is the system or code of morals of a particular person, religion, group, profession, etc.

Ethics, according to VSP RAO (2004) is defined Ethics as: “a body of principles or standards of human conduct that govern the behaviours of individuals and groups. Ethics arise not simply from man’s creation but from human nature itself making it a natural body of laws from which man’s laws

Ethics has been applicable to economics, politics and political science, leading to several different and unrelated fields of applied ethics, including Business ethics and Marxism. Ethics has been applied to family structure, sexuality, and how society views the roles of individuals; leading to several distinct and unrelated fields of applied ethics, including feminism. Ethics has been applied to war, leading to the fields of pacifism and nonviolence

BUSINESS ETHICS

Business ethics can be defined as blueprints of principles and values that governing decisions and actions within a company. In the business world, the organization’s culture sets standards for ascertaining the difference between good and bad decision making and behaviour.

A definition for business ethics boils down to knowing the difference between right and wrong and choosing to do what is right. The phrase ‘business ethics’ can be used to describe the actions of individuals within an organization, as well as the organization as a whole.

WHAT IS ENGENEERING ETHICS?

Engineering ethics course is not about preaching virtue rather, its objective is to increase your ability as engineers to responsibly confront moral issues raised by technological activity.

CODE OF ETHICS FOR ENGINEERS

Engineers Uphold and advance the integrity, honour and dignity of the engineering profession by:

I. Analysing their knowledge and skill for the enhancement of human welfare;

II. Being honest and impartial, and serving with fidelity the public, their employers and clients:

III. Making efforts to increase the competence and prestige of the Engineering profession

FUNDAMENTAL CONNONS FOR ENGINEERING ETHICS

1. Engineers shall hold paramount the safety, health and Welfare of the public in the performance of their Professional duties.

2. Engineers shall perform services only in the areas of their competence.

3. Engineers shall issue public statements only in an Objective and truthful manner.

4. Engineers shall act in professional matters for each Employer or client as faithful agents or trustees, and shall avoid conflicts of interest.

5. Engineers shall build their professional reputation on the merit of their services and shall not compete unfairly with others.

6. Engineers shall act in such a manner as to uphold and enhance the honour, integrity and dignity of the profession.

7. Engineers shall continue their professional development throughout their careers and shall provide opportunities for the professional development of those engineers under their supervision.

WHAT IS ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS

Environmental ethics determines classical ethics to a breaking point Environmental ethics involves high risk. Environmental ethics requires risk. Environmental ethics help in ascertaining poorly charted terrain, where it is easy to get lost. One must hazard the kind of insight that first looks like foolishness. Some people see environmental ethics with a positive frame of mind–expecting rights for rocks and chicken liberation, misplaced concern for chipmunks and daisies. Elsewhere, you think, ethicists deal with sober concerns: medical ethics, business ethics, and justice in public affairs, questions of life and death, peace and war.

Environment ethics aims at appropriate respect for life. But we do not just need a humanist ethic applied to the environment, analogously to the ways we have needed one for business, law, medicine, technology, international, or nuclear disarmament. Respect for life demands an ethic concerned about human welfare, like the others and now concerning the environment. But environmental ethics in a broader sense stands on a frontier, as radically theoretical as it is applied.

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1.2 IMPORTANCE OF ETHICS IN ORGANIZATION

Ethical consideration in business is important to managers as individual’s personals life and business life cannot be neatly separated with respect to moral judgements. A lot of factors contributed for ethical consideration becoming a primary concern for today’s organizations. Some factors are discussed below:

1: If organization does not behave in accordance with the social system expectation, it might not merely lose its market share or face another piece of legislated control but might lose its very right to exist.

2: Even if the manager insist on a narrow definition of his role as merely a producer of goods, it is essential that he take these intangibles into consideration since they are the real motivating force in an organization.

3: The public is insisting that business leaders are, in fact responsible for the general social welfare that the manager’s responsibility go far beyond those of running the business.

4: Ethics play a crucial role in organization as without ethics organization may go hay why from its ultimate goal and as a result the real sense for existence remain undercover .

5: Ethics are the backbone of the organization. In absence of this backbone the organization would not be able to maintain healthy relations between employee and employee, employee and employer, employer and managers etc.

1.3 BREIF SUMMARY OF ASSIGNMENT

The assignment on ethics clearly states what are the moral values, beliefs, thinking etc. which are socially acceptable. This assignment helps to give a clear picture about what is accepted and what is not accepted, what is ethical and what is unethical, what is good and what is bad etc. It also help in understanding that ethics do differ from people to people moreover from society to society(birth control is mandatory in communist societies but not in catholic Christian society) This assignment describe the definition of ethics, its important both in society and in organization. Thus we say that this assignment help one to understand the insight of the prevailing conditions stating what is accepted and what is not.

WHAT IS ETHICAL DILEMMAS?

Ethical dilemma is also known as moral dilemmas. An ethical dilemma is a situation or problem in which each available and possible course of action breaches some otherwise binding moral principles to decide what is ethical and what is unethical.

Thus we say that moral dilemmas refer to a situation which involves conflict between moral requirements. These situations have very apparent conflict between moral imperative

IS NUCLEAR ENERGY SAFE?

Yes nuclear energy is safe because we know nuclear energy is useful, clean and effective because, at present, 137 nuclear reactors are generating more than one-third of Western Europe’s electricity and 440 in all are supplying one-seventh of the world’s electricity

Earlier some people misunderstood the by-product of nuclear energy i.e. Radiation as deadly. But radiation is part of our natural environment and we can survive with it. All of us are exposed to natural radioactivity every minute, mainly from rocks and soil. The radiation bombarding us increases up to 10% when we sleep next to another human. Nuclear power is a gift from nature. It can be harnessed cleanly and safely.

NUCLEAR ENERGY ENVIRONMENTFRIENDLY

The nuclear energy is environment friendly as it is safe and it could be explain via example.

1: The Exelon Corporation runs 17 nuclear power plants all over the country and shows how these plants help reduce climate change.

2: The Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) is a non-profit group, which works to reduce climate change through methods of nuclear energy production.

These are one of those groups working to create new technologies that will make nuclear power a safer and more environmental friendly source of energy because they believe it is a necessary source for controlling climate changes.

Perhaps Nuclear energy has the lowest impact on the environment including flora, fauna, air, land, and water. It produces no harmful greenhouse gases, isolates its waste from the environment, and requires less area to produce the same amount of electricity as compare to other sources.

NUCLEAR ENERGY COST EFFECTIVENESS

The nuclear energy is not at all cost effective because the biggest financial crunch with nuclear power is the time period it takes to build the reactor. Large and heavy construction together with the various public notices and enquiries and legal procedure makes it an expensive process. Moreover Construction alone will take 5-6 years. During this time interest must be paid to the creditor without any return since no electricity will be produced till construction work is complete.

NUCLER ENERGY USEFUL TO UK’S SOCIETY AND PUBLIC

Nuclear energy is useful UK’s society and public due to certain reasons which are discussed below:

1: POWERING OUR ECONOMY: Through nuclear energy the United Kingdom generates a fifth of the country’s electricity (19.26% in 2004). The Nuclear Installations Inspectorate oversees all nuclear power installations and, as of 2006, the United Kingdom operates 24 nuclear reactors. The country also uses nuclear reprocessing plants, such as Sell afield

2: DEVELOPMENT: Nuclear energy in playing an important role in development as in year 2007, there have been some significant developments towards nuclear fusion being implemented to solve the predicted energy crisis, most significantly and recently the drawing-up of plans to build one fusion power station, that will ‘supply power to the National Grid within.

3: REDUCTION IN POLLUTION: The major cause of pollution is the burning of fossil fuels. Nuclear energy plants produce electricity through the fission of uranium, not the burning of fuels. Consequently, nuclear power plants do not pollute the air with nitrogen oxides, sulphur oxides, dust or greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide etc.

MAP SHOWING NEW NOMINATED NUCLEAR SITES IN ENGLAND

HOW TO SOLVE ETHICAL DELIMMAS

There are certain things that make ethical dilemmas particularly difficult to solve is that they often involve conflicts between two or more deeply held beliefs. Consider the example given below:

A friend of yours just had a baby. He’s the most homely baby you’ve ever seen. While holding her new baby boy in her arms, your friend asks, “Isn’t he the best looking baby you’ve ever seen? Now you value honesty. But you also believe you shouldn’t needlessly hurt someone’s feelings. You have an ethical dilemma!

According to my analysis and conception ethical dilemmas could be sought out in three ways:

1: KNOW YOUR VALUES: There are certain values about which society agrees. For example, we tend to value honesty. Our discussion here isn’t designed to change your values – instead, it’s about applying them. Before you can apply them, you have to know what they are.

2: SELECT A MODEL: According to the analysis, Moral Issues in Business, ethical theories can be divided into two classifications: consequential theories (the formal term for these is teleological theories) and non-consequential theories (formal name is deontological theories). As a result a proper model is must.

3: USE A PROBLEM SOLVING PROCESS: Now you know your values and you have a model with which to apply them. The remaining piece is to follow an orderly process to solve the problem, because not all ethical dilemmas are as simple as your friend and her baby that we discussed in the previous example.

ETHICAL RESONING: Ethical reasoning is a type of reasoning directed towards deciding what to do and, when successful. And it comes into play when various individuals enter into relationships with mutual obligations. Ethical reasoning involves weighing of values held by the individuals to result in some course of action or outcome. In short it is a deciding factor determining what is ethical and unethical.

3.1 MORAL VALUES:

Moral values is a combination of moral (i.e. what is ethical) and values (i.e. social principles) MORAL+VALUES. Moral values are essentially what society views as acceptable, or fundamentally right. Moral values often originate from religious views and understanding. Morals can be things that aren’t necessarily dictated by laws, example, it’s may not be illegal to have an affair, but is it morally right? Moral views can also be reflected in the laws passed, such as the proposition at concerning the sanctity of marriage. You could view the moral value of the public as shifting, seeing how a proposition like that is even necessary.

3.2 ALLERNATIVE TO NUCLEAR ENERGY

At present there are large numbers of alternatives which are available for nuclear energy. But the alternative I am giving is based on my conception and theory which is discussed below:

“Just select a particular land suitable for cultivation only by natural means in order to maintain the fertility so that the soil is unaffected. Plant more trees. Within the duration for the growth of the trees construct some turbines and equipment’s just nearer to the cultivated lands. Cut half of the plants and burn it so that the steam is used to drive turbines from which we can produce electricity. The merit is that the Carbon di-oxide liberated will be consumed by the trees itself. So it is eco-friendly and non-polluting. As bio manures are used the fertility of the soil is maintained. It’ll be an efficient method. May it is modest now but definitely when compared to hazardous wastes in nuclear energy its better.”

3.3 ANALYSIS ON NUCLEAR ENERGY

Unlike every coin has two aspects “A NEGATIVE AND A POSITIVE “similar is the case with nuclear energy it has positives as well as negatives.

4. My recommendation to the UK government would be to attain “a perfect balance” between use of nuclear energy and use of other alternative (renewable) sources like solar, dams, wind power etc. Because To generate nuclear energy uranium fuel is used, use an isotope of uranium which is then subjected to nuclear fission.

And it leads to radiation as a result it leads to saviour diseases like cancer etc. So the UK government should be cautious regarding nuclear energy and should operate within the limits aiming at a perfect balance with other alternatives.

4.1 HUMAN CENTERED ETHICS

It is also known as “anthropocentrism” The anthropocentric belief is that human beings are the sole bearers of intrinsic value or possess greater intrinsic value than non-human nature. It is therefore acceptable to employ the resources of the natural world for only human ends. Anthropocentric ethics is adequate to the task of grounding care for the natural environment. The human involvement in ethics play a very crucial role thus we say that anthropocentrism focus on human ethics.

4.2 SCIENTIFIC CENTERED ETHICS

The term scientific ethics may refer to the ethics of doing science. Scientific ethics is a branch of applied ethics. Scientific ethics is a subset of professional ethics, the special rules of conduct adhered to by people engaged in those pursuits called professions. It is distinct from, but consistent with, both ordinary morality and moral theory. The codes of professional ethics derive from the two bargains that define a profession: the internal code of practice and the external bargain between the profession and society.

4.3 BIOCENTRIC ETHICS

Bio centric ethics refer to any theory that views all life as possessing intrinsic value is known as bio centric ethics. Bio centric ethics represents a significant departure from classical and traditional ethical thinking. I.e. it focuses on attitude and character rather than moral values.

4.4 ECOCENTRIC ETHICS

The term eco centric ethics was propounded by” Aldo Leopold’s” according to him Any ethics that places an emphasis on ecological wholes and moves away from individual plants and animals; value is placed on these ecological systems as wholes. Thus we say that ecocentric ethics are the holistic ethics rather than the individualistic ethics. Ecocentric ethics appeals to ecology in one way or another for help in explaining and defending its conclusions.

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Possingham (forthcoming) ‘The Biodiversity Bank Cannot is a Lending

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Valuable but Not Infinitely Valuable’.

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