The Meaning of Ownership

Throughout history, philosophers have attempted to describe the meaning of ownership and how it relates to a person’s sense of self without being able to fully agree on what it means. Plato argued that ownership of objects has a negative effect on the character of a person, while Aristotle claimed that owning physical items helps develop a person’s moral character. Later on, Jean-Paul Sartre said that ownership extended beyond just physical objects to also include non physical objects as well, such as possession of a skill or knowledge.

I believe ownership isn’t inherently good or bad and can be either depending on what it is, for example owning the right knowledge and tools to help save someone’s life during a medical emergency versus owning the right knowledge and tools to commit a crime and get away with it.

Another good example of this difference are the three types of hackers, white hat, gray hat, and black hat hackers. White hat hat hackers, also sometimes referred to as ethical hackers or penetration testers, are usually hired to find vulnerabilities in systems so they can be patched before someone with malicious intent can find those vulnerabilities. Gray hat hackers are similar to white hat hackers, where they still use their skills for good and notifying companies of vulnerabilities, they do it without the companies knowledge or permission. And black hat hackers, or unethical hackers, illegally hack into systems to disrupt services or to steal information usually either for personal gain, political reasons, or to prove some point.

A real example of this type of ownership would be the case of Kevin Mitnick, who was a black hat hacker that possessed the knowledge and skills to be able to hack over 40 major companies, including the North American Aerospace Defense Command, though he never exploited any data that he found from these companies he never notified the companies of what he was doing or that they had vulnerabilities. An example of ownership being good is with the same person, Kevin Mitnick, who after being released from prison decided to start using his skills for good and started a security consulting business. This shows how ownership isn’t inherently a good or bad thing, because even though white hat hackers possess the exact same skills as black hat hackers, they still use their skills for good even though they could just as easily use them to cause harm and disruption.

I personally plan on going into cyber security, where I will either work for a company to patch any vulnerabilities that are found by penetration testers, or I will become a penetration tester myself to find those vulnerabilities so that they can be fixed by other people. Because no systems in the modern day are 100% secure from attacks and new vulnerabilities are found almost just as fast as they get patched, it is up to cyber security professionals to continue fighting against black hat hackers, even though fully securing systems against any type of attack is practically impossible to achieve.

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