introducing ethackal

ethackal is a new site focused on ethical hacking, penetration testing, and security research. ethackal is run by John Miller, an information security professional who works daily with penetration testing and vulnerability assessments. I will be carving ethackal into my personal niche in the Internet, posting my comments on the latest infosec news and articles on topics I find interesting enough to write about.

While I do intend to be the primary commentator and author of this site, I leave open the possibility of inviting others to submit articles and news postings. It is far too early in the life of ethackal to tell just what will happen. If you would like to help out with generating content for this site, please use the contact form to get in touch.

The name ethackal is a portmanteau of 'ethical' and 'hack', and pronounced 'ethical'. Some people shy away from the terms 'hack' and 'hacker' due to the stigma placed on them in the past decades. I have long associated hackers not with criminal activity, but with a curious nature and desire to understand and manipulate complex systems. This is the type of hacking referred to in ethackal. Criminals use many different means of plying their trade, sometimes involving technical exploits. It is not the methods they use that make criminals criminal, but their motives and the results of their actions. Ethical hacking is the legitimate use of these technologies and skills to perform legal and constructive assessments of security implementations.