Certified Ethical Hacker via Self Study

ddonzal writes "In his latest column for EH-Net, wireless hacking guru, Dan Hoffman, offers up his experience of attaining the CEH credential (Certified Ethical Hacker). Great read with fantastic advice for budding ethical hackers out there."

Comments

BS

[GrAfFiT]

"Certified" ethical hacker sounds to me as bulletproof as Suk Imperial Conditioning..

No mention of ethics.

[onion2k]

The article, or perhaps the course, neglects to mention anything about the "ethical" side of things. It's all well and good to say you're a "Certified Ethical Hacker", but if noone has quizzed you on the ethics of hacking then how could an employer be sure you actually are one?

In fact, even if you were questioned about the ethics of hacking, you might lie. An unethical person would.

So it's just a fancy but ultimately meaningless name then. "Certified Hacker" would suffice.

But do you really need the word "Certified" on a certificate? Isn't that redundant? It's obvious you're certified if you're brandishing a certificate.

So you could just as well put "Hacker" instead.

I don't think many employers want to employ a hacker. They're criminals!

I don't think I'll be taking this course. ;)

The ethics of hacking

[Opportunist]

You could just as well create a course of "ethical business". Yeah, sure, you could teach the ethics of business. Whether people apply it or not is up to them. Not something that's under your control.

Don't get me wrong, teaching information is by default never wrong. Knowledge is power. Information is necessary to keep up the fight against the black hats. To abuse the quote from a different group, if information is outlawed, only outlaws will have it.

But I doubt that you can teach or even "certify" ethics. You have them, or your don't.

Re:The ethics of hacking

[MaestroSartori]

You have them, or your don't.

Ethics are not always absolute. Whether an action is ethical or not can depend on context, personal beliefs and so on. You can debate ethics as part of a course of education, or as regards a particular area of life.

For instance, you might say it is unethical to hack someone's computer without their knowledge. But if the ethical hacker in question works for a law enforcement agency, and is performing the hack legally with all the relevant oversight in order to gain evidence of or to prevent an illegal act, then you could argue whether it's ethical or not.

You were more correct at the start of your post when you said whether people apply their skills ethically or not is up to them. That's the real issue here - just doing a course in ethical hacking means that the person presumably has knowledge of the ethics issues involved. It doesn't tell you a thing about what they personally believe, or will do with their new-found hacking skill...

Re:The illusion of ethics...

[billcopc]

Ethical behavior is much like flocking behavior, in that it is a baseline to ensure everyone cooperates towards common goals. This implies that the individual shares those goals, and to a much greater extend, the individual is afraid of being abandoned. If, in any given moment, their goals are divergent, ethical behavior is unrequired in that moment and could even be detrimental. Even flocking birds have intellect and consciousness, so why do they always follow each other ? Fear takes over.

English: if I want to be a nice little grain-fed short-sighted lemming like everyone else, or more likely I'm afraid of being left out, then I will play by the "ethical rules", because that's the path to reaching my goal. If, on the other hand, I have a greater vision that does NOT converge with the mass majority, ethics can become a burden and even trap me in a corner.

So these white hat "security analysts" are being ethical because they need a job to fund their WoW habit. The attackers, are being unethical because they want botnets to empower their cyberterrorism for highly profitable extortion. Same difference, not very stimulating through.

Here's a much more dramatic example: health care. If X-pharma-racket is producing a drug that relieves the suffering of AIDS patients, and markets it at a somewhat reasonable price, they are considered ethical.

If Y-psycho-lab is finding a 100% cure for AIDS, but needs to chop up a dozen AIDS victims to further their research, it is considered UNethical, despite the great advances the research would offer. They're doing good, but they have to do a little bit of "bad" in order to achieve that goal.

Ethics may be instinctive and obvious, but that doesn't mean honest people are unable to break those fundamental laws. Hell, I'd kill a handful of people if it meant saving millions, but I wouldn't spread computer viruses for money.. go figure!