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Types of Hackers

Hackers can be classified into different categories based on their intent and goals, with analogies drawn from old Westerns. White hat hackers, also known as ethical hackers, try to find weaknesses without harmful intent in order to perform security assessments. Black hat hackers, or crackers, hack to gain unauthorized access and harm systems or steal information, which is illegal. Grey hat hackers exploit weaknesses without permission but bring them to owners' attention, hoping to be appreciated or paid. Other categories include red hat hackers who target government agencies, blue hat hackers who test systems before launch, elite hackers with advanced skills, script kiddies who use pre-made tools, neophytes who are new to hacking, and hacktivists

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273 views2 pages

Types of Hackers

Hackers can be classified into different categories based on their intent and goals, with analogies drawn from old Westerns. White hat hackers, also known as ethical hackers, try to find weaknesses without harmful intent in order to perform security assessments. Black hat hackers, or crackers, hack to gain unauthorized access and harm systems or steal information, which is illegal. Grey hat hackers exploit weaknesses without permission but bring them to owners' attention, hoping to be appreciated or paid. Other categories include red hat hackers who target government agencies, blue hat hackers who test systems before launch, elite hackers with advanced skills, script kiddies who use pre-made tools, neophytes who are new to hacking, and hacktivists

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geetha samynathan
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Hackers can be classified into different categories such as white hat, black hat, and

grey hat, based on their intent of hacking a system. These different terms come
from old Spaghetti Westerns, where the bad guy wears a black cowboy hat and the
good guy wears a white hat.

White Hat Hackers


White Hat hackers are also known as Ethical Hackers. They never intent to harm a
system, rather they try to find out weaknesses in a computer or a network system
as a part of penetration testing and vulnerability assessments.
Ethical hacking is not illegal and it is one of the demanding jobs available in the IT
industry. There are numerous companies that hire ethical hackers for penetration
testing and vulnerability assessments.

Black Hat Hackers


Black Hat hackers, also known as crackers, are those who hack in order to gain
unauthorized access to a system and harm its operations or steal sensitive
information.
Black Hat hacking is always illegal because of its bad intent which includes stealing
corporate data, violating privacy, damaging the system, blocking network
communication, etc.

Grey Hat Hackers


Grey hat hackers are a blend of both black hat and white hat hackers. They act
without malicious intent but for their fun, they exploit a security weakness in a
computer system or network without the owner’s permission or knowledge.
Their intent is to bring the weakness to the attention of the owners and getting
appreciation or a little bounty from the owners.

Miscellaneous Hackers
Apart from the above well-known classes of hackers, we have the following
categories of hackers based on what they hack and how they do it −

Red Hat Hackers

Red hat hackers are again a blend of both black hat and white hat hackers. They
are usually on the level of hacking government agencies, top-secret information
hubs, and generally anything that falls under the category of sensitive information.

Blue Hat Hackers

A blue hat hacker is someone outside computer security consulting firms who is
used to bug-test a system prior to its launch. They look for loopholes that can be
exploited and try to close these gaps. Microsoft also uses the term BlueHat to
represent a series of security briefing events.

Elite Hackers

This is a social status among hackers, which is used to describe the most skilled.
Newly discovered exploits will circulate among these hackers.

Script Kiddie

A script kiddie is a non-expert who breaks into computer systems by using pre-
packaged automated tools written by others, usually with little understanding of the
underlying concept, hence the term Kiddie.

Neophyte

A neophyte, "n00b", or "newbie" or "Green Hat Hacker" is someone who is new to


hacking or phreaking and has almost no knowledge or experience of the workings
of technology and hacking.

Hacktivist

A hacktivist is a hacker who utilizes technology to announce a social, ideological,


religious, or political message. In general, most hacktivism involves website
defacement or denialof-service attacks.

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