Understanding open source technologies, the ethical way

The recent times have seen many big companies and even US government face brunt of invasions by hackers from other countries, creating a huge impact on world politics.

With this trend several hackers offer help in repairing vulnerabilities in such systems. They in turn demand payments for the same, which is not ethical, because their work does not comply with pure assurance that an ethical hacker always guarantees.

Thus for us ethical hackers, this unethical way  poses a threat to our image, which is yet to be repaired in the minds of governments and people in general.

Today we are going to discuss about the most friendly and available tool which will secure you, the way you want it and to the best of your knowledge.

I am talking about open source technologies and operating systems, which are really amazing and helpful to people on both sides of cyber warfare. Open source technologies have helped black hat hackers develop some top-class systems.

We also have some very good projects and technologies that have given complete assurance to developers over the years.

Statistics show that every year, almost 25,000 open source projects are developed by students as well as developers, a 200% increase each year since 2005.

Open source projects mainly based on Linux kernel have helped avoid injections many-a-time and have served purposes for penetration testing.

Looking at the new genre of upcoming mobile technologies, with Python and Android serving as open source operating systems, it has made life easy, enabling us to develop applications pertaining to our requirements. We can use other applications by modifying their basic codes, thus enabling power into our hands.

There is a lot more scope in developing applications based on cyber security and monitoring purposes for smartphones, as it is still a new concept.

Open source in India’s business sector can save $2 billion making it easier and faster to process information. Open sourcing will also serve purpose of security, making it more independent, rather than depending on other countries' systems that can be threatening while handling crucial data.

My advice to all ethical hackers as well as those pursuing their projects this technology is to use it ethically to safeguard yourself and create awareness for this new revolution which can help lessen the cyber crime rate, and keep it under control, while increasing probability of solutions to such cyber crime cases, to come out quicker and cheaper than before.

The author is an ethical hacker and specialises in cyber crime investigations and forensics