Grey Hats
A gray hat, in the hacker community, refers to a talented hacker who acts illegally, albeit with good intentions. They are a hybrid between white hat and black hat hackers. They do not usually attack out of personal interests or malicious intent, but are prepared to commit crimes during the course of their technological exploits in order to achieve greater security. While white hat hackers tend to communicate to companies about breaches of security. quietly, gray hat hackers are more likely to alert the hacker community, as well as companies, and simply observe the consequences.
The term gray hat was coined by a group of hackers called L0pht in 1998. The group makes the references in an interview with the New York Times in 1999 where it describes its “gray hat” behavior. The first known use of the term gray hat, in the context of computer security literature, dates back to 2001.
Black Hats
The phrase was used to describe hackers who do not support the ethical reporting of vulnerabilities directly to the software vendor. This in contrast to the full disclosure practices that prevailed in the white hat community at the time; and in the principles of black hats, no one should be aware of security holes.
On the other hand, the term “black hat” has its origin in Western films, where “the bad guys” used hats of this color, while those of “the good guys” were white, as we saw in the previous article that talks about the withe hats.
Therefore, these cybercriminals are those who try to gain unauthorized access to a system or network with the clear objective of doing evil. The black hat hackers are not allowed to do what they do, and all they want is to compromise security systems or block the network.
They usually try to gain access to the passwords as well as the financial information of their victims.
It is therefore the black hat hackers who are behind the cyber attacks and espionage that occur every day in different parts of the world. They have enough capacity to steal financial information and spread malware.
One of its main methods is the “hijacking” of information, usually from large companies. They access the systems and are made with sensitive information, such as the personal data of customers. They then demand a certain amount of ransom money from the companies to “release” the information. The transaction is made in Bitcoins or other cryptocurrencies.
The differences in whether of these 2 would not matter much since both sides are willing to commit cyber crimes and what uses are given to strengthen our cyber security since currently the internet is essential for many people and companies seeking to expand and they manage their resources, projects by this means.
