Basic Steps of Hacker or Ethical Hacker

[ntdll]

Hacking itself is not a crime unless it's for purposes that breach trust or law

This is not exactly true. The DMCA (ugly piece of crap that it is) made it illegal to decrypt or even disassemble something that you're not authorized to. So in the U.S., it is actually illegal to reverse engineer something. Not that anyone has been tried for it, but it does remain illegal. It's even illegal to use technology for anything not allowed in their terms of service.

And it is illegal to download any copyrighted material. Again, no one has been tried for it, but it remains illegal.

And sorry to say, in the U.S., there is no such thing as "ethical" hacking. Gaining entry to a website that you are not authorized to access is illegal, whether you do it for ethical reasons or not. If the company ASKS you to do penetration testing, that's ok. But if they don't ask you, it's illegal.

Please reread your quote of me "Hacking itself is not a crime unless it's for purposes that breach trust or law"

I don't live in the US so that does not apply to me. Yes you're right, but I cannot comment on everyone's boundaries respectfully. Where I live you can reverse engineer and hack what you want within reason, and if something is a grey area people hush about it and protect their backs.

If one would reverse engineer an unsigned IoT camera firmware, backdoor it and return it to Amazon then that's obviously a piss-take. But reverse engineering that same camera in your home for whatever reason you decide is not frowned upon or illegal. Also yes, that would remain illegal here too, pen-testing someones website without their prior knowledge is also never a good idea anyway. What you buy here is yours, take for example the Xbox hardware, FWIR it is leased to a user in the US, whereas the courts here ruled it's not leased and owned; however that does not mean MS cannot ban your hardware or account as they'd be well within their right.

@MaskedUser - Unfortunately intrusion detection systems is not something I can talk about. However someone else here may have relevant knowledge.

Feel free to add to the debate.