Hacker Classes - Black hats, White Hats, Gray Hats,

Continuing to my old post who-are-hackers.html

Hacker Classes

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Black hats
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Individuals with extraordinary computing skills, resorting to malicious or destructive activities. Also known as 'Crackers.'
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White Hats
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Individuals professing hacker skills and using them for defensive purposes. Also known as 'Security Analysts'.
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Gray Hats
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Individuals who work both offensively and defensively at various times.
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Ethical Hacker Classes
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Former Black Hats
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Reformed crackers
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First-hand experience
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Lesser credibility perceived
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White Hats
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Independent security consultants (maybe groups as well)
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Claims to be knowledgeable about black hat activities
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Consulting Firms
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Part of ICT firms
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Good credentials

Hacking Categories

               Introduction

Hackers can be divided into three groups: white hats, black hats, and gray hats. Ethical hackers
usually fall into the white-hat category, but sometimes they are former gray hats who have become
security professionals and who use their skills in an ethical manner.

                White Hat Hackers

White Hats are the good guys, the ethical hackers who use their hacking skills for
defensive purposes. White-hat hackers are usually security professionals with knowledge of
hacking and the hacker tool set and who use this knowledge to locate weaknesses and implement
countermeasures.

Black Hat Hackers

Black hats are the bad guys: the malicious hackers or
crackers
who use their skills
for illegal or malicious purposes. They break into or otherwise violate the system integrity of
remote machines, with malicious intent. Having gained unauthorized access, black-hat hackers
destroy vital data, deny legitimate users service, and basically cause problems for their targets.
Black-hat hackers and crackers can easily be differentiated from white-hat hackers because their
actions are malicious.

Gray Hat Hackers


Grey hats are hackers who may work offensively or defensively, depending on the situation.
This is the dividing line between hacker and cracker. Both are powerful forces on the Internet,
and both will remain permanently. And some individuals qualify for both categories. The
existence of such individuals further clouds the division between these two groups of people.
In addition to these groups, there are self-proclaimed ethical hackers, who are interested in
hacker tools mostly from a curiosity standpoint. They may want to highlight security problems
in a system or educate victims so they secure their systems properly. These hackers are
doing their “victims” a favor. For instance, if a weakness is discovered in a service offered by
an investment bank, the hacker is doing the bank a favor by giving the bank a chance to rectify
the vulnerability.

Definitions of Hacker on the Web

• someone who plays golf poorly
• a programmer who breaks into computer systems in order to steal or change or destroy information as a form of cyber-terrorism
• a programmer for whom computing is its own reward; may enjoy the challenge of breaking into other computers but does no harm; "true hackers subscribe to a code of ethics and look down upon crackers"
• hack: one who works hard at boring tasks
  wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn
• In computing, a hacker is a person in one of several distinct (but not completely disjoint) communities and subcultures: * someone who comes up ...
  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_(computing)
• The Hacker (real name: Michel Amato) is a French electroclash and techno producer who has worked extensively with Miss Kittin. ...
  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hacker
• Hacker is a card game (not a trading card game) made by Steve Jackson Games (SJG). Published in 1992, the players impersonate hackers fighting for ...
  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_(card_game)
• Hacker is a 1985 computer game by Activision. It was designed by Steve Cartwright, produced by Brad Fregger and was released for the Amiga, Amstrad CPC, Apple II, Atari XL/XE, Atari ST, Commodore 64, Macintosh, MS-DOS, MSX and ZX Spectrum. ...
  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_(video_game)
• The Hackers (Swedish Hackare) were a race of short people who used to live in Scandinavia, according to Swedish folklore.
  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_(folklore)
• Mod or modification is a term generally applied to PC games, especially first-person shooters, RPGs and real-time strategy games. ...
  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_(cheater)
• A hack is a row of stacked green (unfired) bricks protected from the rain by a covering of straw, slates or special wooden hack covers, the sides protected by mats or planks.
  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_(masonry)
• This is a list of characters that have appeared on the PBS Kids GO! series Cyberchase.
  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hacker_(Cyberchase)
• In home computing, a hacker is a person who heavily modifies the software or hardware of their computer system. ...
  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_(hobbyist)
• In common usage, a hacker is a person who breaks into computers. The subculture that has evolved around hackers is often referred to as the computer underground. ...
  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_(computer_security)
• In one of several meanings of the word in computing, a hacker is a member of the computer programmer subculture originated in the 1960s in the ...
  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_(programmer_subculture)