However, even given that the intent of the secretive group appears to be benign, the practice of unauthorized vulnerability scans and assessments of websites is highly controversial.

That's because under U.S. law at least, an unauthorized scan to find security holes is regarded as an attack and possibly a break-in. However, YGN Ethical Hacker Group in the past has countered that website operators, especially in the security and high-tech field, have a larger responsibility to not let their websites be compromised and exploited, which could undermine security on a broad basis.

in Network World's Wide Area Network section.