who is a ethical hacker?

An ethical hacker is a computer and network expert who attacks a security system on behalf of its owners, seeking vulnerabilities that a malicious hacker could exploit. To test a security system, ethical hackers use the same methods as their less principled counterparts, but report problems instead of taking advantage of them. Ethical hacking is also known aspenetration testing, intrusion testing and red teaming. An ethical hacker is sometimes called a white hat, a term that comes from old Western movies, where the "good guy" wore a white hat and the "bad guy" wore a black hat.

simple definition of HACKING...

Hacking it is unconventional way
of interacting with system which
we are not supposed to do.

OPEN SOURCE

OPEN SOURCE

                                Open source it is a simple word which mean a lot to software programmers and developers. Open source software is computer software that is freely available with source code to the general public with relaxed or non-existent copy right restrictions. It is often developed in a public collaborative manner. Users have the access over the source code so that they can fine tune, report bugs, distribute it, submit additions to software, code fixes for the software. It is an explicit feature of open source that it may put no restrictions on the use or distribution by any organization or user.

HISTORY OF OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE

                                Although all stories related to software are obviously short, that of open source is one of longest among them. In fact it could be said that in the beginning, there was only free software. Later on, proprietary software was born, and it quickly dominated. Recently free software is considered as an option again. In 1960 when IBM sold large scale commercial computers some software was free and later the situation changed after unbundling IBM software and in mid 1970ss it was usual to find proprietary software. In late 1970s and early 1980s, two different groups were establishing the roots of current open source software movement. On the US east coast Richard stall man programmer at MIT AI LAB resigned and started GNU project and free software foundation the ultimate goal was to build free operating system. On the philosophical side Richard stall man wrote GNU manifesto, stating that availability of code and freedom to redistribute and modify are fundamental righta. And similarly open BSD on US west. During 1980s and 1990s open source software continued it development initially in severally relatively isolated groups.

OPEN SOURCE LICENCE

                                A license defines the rights and obligations that a licensor grants to licensee. Open source licenses grant licensees to copy modify and redistribute source code. The ownership of copyright  is separate and distinct from  the ownership of the work, a person can own a copy of a piece of code without the rights to copy modify or redistribute copies of it. Some examples open source software licences include Apache license, BSD license, GNU general public license, GNU lesser general license, MIT license, Eclipse public license and Mozilla public license. The proliferation of open source licenses is one of the few negative aspects of open source movement because it is often difficult to understand the legal implications of licenses with more than 180,000 open source projects available and its more than 1400 unique licenses and how to organize open source  software in commercial way.

PROPRIETARY SOFTWARE AND OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE

                                Free or open source software and closed source are two approaches to the distribution of software. Closed source software is also proprietary software, it comes with restrictive copyright licenses, code is not released to the public. Proprietary software is maintained by a team who produces their product in a compiled executable state, which is what the market is allowed access to. The free open source model allows for able users to view modify a product’s source code. The top four reasons individuals or organizations choose opens source software are 1.lower cost, 2.security, 3.no vendor lock in and 4.better quality. Since innovative companies no longer rely heavily on software sales, proprietary software has become less of a necessity. As such things like open source.

 0PEN SOURCE SOFTWARE FREE SOURCE SOFTWARE

                                Open source software and free software are different terms for software which comes with certain rights, or freedoms, for the user. They describe two approaches and philosophies towards free software. Open source software and free source software both describe software which is free from licensing restrictions. The definition of open source software and free source software was written to be almost identical to the free software definition. There are few cases of software that is free software but not open source software and vice versa.

BENEFITS OF OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE

                                Usually the first perceived advantage of open source is fact that open source software is  made available at low cost or free. Now let us see how do characteristics turn into advantages:  The availability of source code and right to modify, it enables unlimited fine tuning and improvement. It is also possible to port code to new hardware, to adapt it to changing conditions, and to reach detailed understanding of how system works. Source code availability makes it much easier to isolate bugs and for a programmer to fix them. The right to redistribute modifications and improvements to code permits all advantages due to modifiability of software to be shared by large communities , in substance the fact that redistribution rights cannot be revoked, and they are universal, is what attracts a substantial crowd of developers to work around open source projects. There is no one to restrict in a unilateral way how software is used. There is always possibility of creating an alternative code base if the current one is some way perceived or wrongly managed. Because of such benefits open source has become so powerful.

DRAWBACKS OF OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE

                                The disadvantages of open source software include that these are not reliable, due to the fact that there is little money put into development, anyone can view, edit and redistribute. There is often no qualified support available the only support if any is usually via forums. Another drawback is the open source applications are in compatible with present day gadgets. No guarantee of updates since we are not paying to open source no body are bound to give updates. Apart fro tese the open source software was so useful.

SUCESSFUL STORIES

                                There are wide range of projects and organizations in open source. Some of more prominent organizations involved in open source software development include Apache software foundation creators of apache web server; Linux foundation a non profit which as of 2012 employed Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux operating system kernel; the eclipse foundation, home of eclipse software development platform; Debian project creators of influential Debian  Linux distribution; the Mozilla foundation, home of fire fox web browser; Android integrated mobile operating system. Several open source programs have become defining entries in their space including GIMP image editing system; Sun’s java programming language and environment; the MySQL database system; Sun’s openoffice.org office productivity suite; Wireshark  network packet sniffer and analyser and many  more projects and companies are emerging day by day.