ITPEC FE Morning October 2020 Question 37
Which of the following is appropriate conduct for a white-hat hacker?
Explanation
Breaking in with the owner's permission, within agreed rules of engagement — a white-hat hacker is an ethical hacker who attacks only to find and report weaknesses.
What separates a white hat from other hackers is authorisation, not skill or technique. Before a penetration test the owner grants written permission and the two sides agree the rules of engagement: which systems are in scope, which methods are allowed, when testing may run and how findings are reported. The tester stays inside those limits and does not damage or disclose data.
Answer (b)
Why not others:
- •(a) — entering a system and changing a file without permission is unauthorised access and tampering, even if the weakness is reported afterwards; this is grey-hat conduct
- •(c) — deleting a file without the owner's permission to show off to other hackers is malicious, black-hat conduct
- •(d) — viewing secret data for money, protest or espionage describes black-hat hackers, hacktivists and spies
Key rule: Permission and an agreed scope make a hack ethical; good intentions after an unauthorised intrusion do not.
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