EC-Council
1
Ethical Hacking &
Countermeasures
EC-Council
2
Ethical Hacking
The explosive growth of the Internet has brought
rather than just theorizing about programming.
This complimentary description was often extended
many good things: electronic commerce, easy access
to vast stores of reference material, collaborative
computing, e-mail, and new avenues for advertising
and information distribution, to name a few. As with
most technological advances, there is also a dark
side: criminal hackers. Governments, companies,
and private citizens around the world are anxious
to be a part of this revolution, but they are afraid
that some hacker will break into their Web server
and replace their logo with pornography, read
their e-mail, steal their credit card number from
an on-line shopping site, or implant software
that will secretly transmit their organization’s
secrets
to
the open Internet. With
these
concerns and others, the ethical hacker can help.
The term “hacker” has a dual usage in the computer
industry today. Originally, the term was defi ned as:
HACKER noun. 1. A person who enjoys learning
the details of computer systems and how to
stretch their capabilities—as opposed to most
users of computers, who prefer to learn only the
minimum amount necessary. 2. One who programs
enthusiastically or who enjoys programming
to the verb form “hacking,” which was used to describe
the rapid crafting of a new program or the making of
changes to existing, usually complicated software.
Occasionally the less talented, or less careful,
intruders would accidentally bring down a system
or damage its fi les, and the system administrators
would have to restart it or make repairs. Other
times, when these intruders were again denied
access once their activities were discovered, they
would react with purposefully destructive actions.
When the number of these destructive computer
intrusions became noticeable, due to the visibility
of the system or the extent of the damage infl icted,
it becam