Ethical Issues Faced by Hackers in the Context of Cyber Security

Business ethical issues are embraced within all organization whether small or big and it is not just a fad with the limited time period. In this context, the article “An ethical dilemma: operating front line of cyber security” focuses on the ethical issues faced by the white hat hackers and black hat hackers. Most of the hackers are being judged in accordance to their work even if they are doing it for the well-being of the community and organisation (Pyper, 2017). In this aspect, the news article shows that in the Australian organization cyber security has turned into a major issue of ethical dilemma where hackers are beginning to suffer from an image problem. They are most of the time perceived as a group anti-social nerds hiding away from the reality of present time hackers. On the other hand, it can be said that hackers nowadays are more organized, and criminal assumptions are not always true. This is the moral dilemma that is hovering over Australian organization related ICT operations.

From the perspectives of ethical hackers, it can be seen that there are a group of black hat hackers who are popularly signified as criminals. From the article it is evident that, these hackers are those who manipulate data, dominating the mainstream bunch of hackers thereby highlighting their ethical counterparts (Thomas, Burmeister & Low, 2017). On the contrary, white hat hackers are those who use their technical knowledge to breach the technical issue for mitigating the vulnerabilities present in cyber security issues other than exploiting them (Pyper, 2017). According to the professional perspectives of ethics, there is six major principle that is associated with they are honesty, improvement of the quality of life, competencies, priority for the communities interest, professional growth and professionalism.

Ethical hackers or white hat hacker’s shares the same method of hacking but for an honest purpose whereas the black hats perform the test to bypass the defence operations.  Ethical hackers, other than taking any benefits of the vulnerabilities they document the issues, offer advice to fix the issues (Lunnay, 2015). These kinds of problems are often seen in ICT operation owing from the improper configuration of system or flaws present within the software.

Ethical hackers do not always perform it in the same way. They may have contrasted motivation and way of hacking. There are some of the hackers who prefer to work for the greater good for improving the quality standards of life and to seek professional growth. On the contrary, some of the hackers are directly employed by the organizations on a professional call (Caron et al., 2016). Many organization hire hackers to solve bug bounties, where employees are paid to find out the vulnerabilities within the organizational system that are growing in the United States as well as Australian organization. In this aspect, private bug bounties offer the professional hackers to examine their skills for even more virtuous opportunities.

Professional Perspectives of Ethics

White hat hackers are accountable for reviewing the vulnerabilities present in the software that are done in priority to save the community (Haug, 2015). There are several instances when the government appoints the hackers to perform a task to save the community from big issues such as terrorism or financial fraud case. These hackers are that point of the time appointed to perform the task on behalf of the government to save the community.

Professional hackers are consistently seeking for a growth in an ethical activity to work on a freelance basis, and are looking for a permanent career in this field.  In order to gain professional development, some of the hackers are officially gaining qualification to evaluate their capability (Ferguson, Thornley & Gibb, 2015). There are also some training courses that offer training to them available from many institutions like EC council. These institutions are delivering a registered certificate for certified ethical hacker’s professional skills within the competitive industry.  In the current scenario, the professional certificate of hacking is a very useful business while demonstrating the reliability and skills of the hacker that is crucial for professional development (Sargolzaei & Nikbakht, 2017). 

Professional ethical hackers are aware of the skills so they use it to ensure that relevant patches are applied to the defected software system in a timely manner. For instance, a current study by bit slight on Windows observed that the operating system was running at 20% among the 35,000 systems (Joppova, 2018). In this context, Microsoft discontinued the use of patches for XP year ago, therefore, any device that is running on these operating system may be threating due to external hacking.  Thus, ethical hackers use professionalism to manage these vulnerable issues.

Theory of consequences

According to these ethical models, an act that is done for the positive outcome is advantageous and acceptable from an ethical perspective. Again, in terms of negative outcome for any of the involved individual the case may be termed as an unethical act (Stahl, Timmermans & Flick, 2016).

In case of hacking when a hacker is performing hacking to protect a business, they are expected to understand the organizational process in depth for the wellbeing of the company. An ethical according to the theory of consequences are aware of the truth and therefore, the consequences are expected to be positive here. To deal with the questions of ethical consequences professionals associations like association for computing machines have founded their own code of ethics and professional behaviour that can help to serve as a principle for the hackers and other organizations (Joppova, 2018).

Different Types of Hackers: Black Hat and White Hat Hackers

Deontological perspective

According to the deontological perspective of ethics, every activity that has been performed under a certain set of rules and principles are needed to be followed. The significance here associated with the professional ICT organizational that deals with software vulnerabilities.  To be specific, operations such as web related financial issues often have some certain professional code of conduct that needs to be followed by the hackers and the employees for security issues (Curren, 2016). These perspectives of ethical judge’s action without hacking considered the consequences of action. It asserts that every individual has a duty to do the rightful thing, even if the individual performs for well-being it will be assumed as morally incorrect. Therefore, according to the theory of Kant, duty is what that is being counted; hacking into another system to conquer knowledge of the software even if no damage is done it will be considered as the wrong commitment of a crime.

Virtue ethics perspective

This specific perspective judges a situation or an individual on the basic values of the individual. In this context, if the virtues are positive the act will be considered as ethical and vice versa (Sargolzaei & Nikbakht, 2017). Therefore, in the case of hacking and considering the current security issues in the different organization, it can be said that hacking is ethical if it is performed for the wellbeing of the community and organization. Hackers have a legal right to access encrypted data to recover or fix the vulnerabilities.

Social contract theory

Social contract theory asserts that the activities those are performed unethically or ethically needs to be in the interest of other happiness as well as social wellbeing. These should support the wellbeing of the society (Haug, 2015). However, in the case of hacking it has been seen that hackers are often assigned to provide financial security to organizational while maintaining the confidentiality and security of the employees.

Value theory is one of the most important theories that can be implemented to gain social and descriptive consequences of the situation. In this aspect, the theory uses several approaches to determining the reason behind taking the decision, to identify the degree based on individual values and things. In this context, the relationship is one of the fundamental developing blocks of life that gives rise to strong emotions such as love, hatred jealousy as well as happiness (Sargolzaei & Nikbakht, 2017). On the contrary, the mainstream culture may disrespect this opinion as it is the rational outcome of love. In a nutshell, the value theory asserts the recognizing values one expects to have from a relationship based on the expectation from life (Thomas, Burmeister & Low, 2017). These values might be testable when one can attempt to subjectively judge an individual to check the reality.

Considering these implications, some instances can be related when an individual in love try to hack their other partners account for checking if that individual is dating someone else. It may be justified but morally wrong where the individual has taken emotions placing over rational thought. Again it has been seen that individual to check their rival company details use hacking. These too can be rationally immoral, because the individual is performing this act out of the sense of jealousy. Therefore, hacking here shows conflicting perspectives under the social value theory. 

Reference list

Caron, X., Bosua, R., Maynard, S. B., & Ahmad, A. (2016). The Internet of Things (IoT) and its impact on individual privacy: An Australian perspective. Computer law & security review, 32(1), 4-15.

Curren, R. (2016). Aristotelian versus virtue ethical character education. Journal Of Moral Education, 45(4), 516-526. doi: 10.1080/03057240.2016.1238820

Ferguson, S., Thornley, C., & Gibb, F. (2015). How do libraries manage the ethical and privacy issues of RFID implementation? A qualitative investigation into the decision-making processes of ten libraries. Journal of Librarianship and Information Science, 47(2), 117-130.

Haug, C. J. (2015). Peer-review fraud—hacking the scientific publication process. New England Journal of Medicine, 373(25), 2393-2395.

Joppova, M. (2018). Spinozian consequentialism of ethics of social consequences. Ethics & Bioethics, 8(1-2), 41-50. doi: 10.2478/ebce-2018-0008

Lunney, B., Borlagdan, J., McNaughton, D., & Ward, P. (2015). Ethical use of social media to facilitate qualitative research. Qualitative Health Research, 25(1), 99-109.

Pyper, G., (31 Oct 2017). An ethical dilemma: operating from the frontline of cybersecurity. CSO Australia (online). Retrieved on 3 August 2018. Retrieved from https://www.cso.com.au/article/629349/an-ethical-dilemma-operating-from-frontline-cybersecurity/

Sargolzaei, E., & Nikbakht, M. (2017). The Ethical and Social Issues of Information Technology: A Case Study. International journal of advanced computer science and applications, 8(10), 138-146.

Stahl, B., Timmermans, J., & Flick, C. (2016). Ethics of Emerging Information and Communication Technologies. Science And Public Policy, scw069. doi: 10.1093/scipol/scw069

Thomas, G., Burmeister, O. K., & Low, G. (2017). Issues of Implied Trust in Ethical Hacking. In Proceedings of The 28th Australasian Conference on Information Systems, December (pp. 4-6)