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Can someone out there tell us what are the differences between a hacker and an ethical hacker?  The first thing that comes in mind would be (1) a hacker is someone bad hacking computers whereas (2) an ethical hacker is someone that hacks but it is for the goodness.  Alright here comes the contradiction, my professor called Ali says that "if there is an ethical hacker, can there be an ethical liar or an ethical murderer?"  How true.. come on, there is even a worm that is called ethical, it comes into your computer and patches up and updates your system without even letting you know!

Basically hacker are best defined as black hat hackers and white hat hackers.  Now do not get me wrong, an ethical hacker is not a white hat hacker!  Understand this very clearly.  A black hat hacker is one that damages a system!  Let us give an example by exploiting your database vulnerability and stealing information, now that is bad ain't that?  You might think that one that protects the system from all this attacks are white hat hackers, no!  That is the job of a penetration tester or so-called ethical hacker! But let's drop this ambigious term, says my professor.  You should call them penetration testers.  A white hat hacker is a hacker that finds an exploit in your system but lets you know.

The difference between a penetration tester and a white hat hacker is that; a penetration tester is someone with a permission to do so!  He is someone which was given a scope to test the attack on.  A white hat hacker is one that does not have any permission to do so but he still does it (although it might be for the better).