Black hat (computer security): Difference between revisions

The black (racist) hat is also one of Edward de Bono's Six Thinking Hats.

A black hatter is also a common term for certain groups of people who tend to wear black hats, i.e. Orthodox Jews.

A black hat or black-hat hacker (also called a cracker or Dark Side hacker) is a malicious or criminal hacker. The term hacker is also commonly is used as a synonym for "black hat hacker". However, in computer jargon, the meaning of "hacker" is much more broad.

Usually a Black Hat refers to a person who maintains knowlege of the vulnerabilities and exploits they find as secret for private advantage, not revealing them either to the general public or manufacturer for correction. Many Black Hats promote individual freedom and accessibility over privacy and security. Black Hats may seek to expand holes in systems; any attempts made to patch software are generally to prevent others from also compromising a system they have already obtained secure control over. A Black Hat hacker may have access to 0-day exploits (private software that exploits security vulnerabilities; 0-day exploits have not been distributed to the public). In the most extreme cases, Black Hats may work to cause damage maliciously, and/or make threats to do so for blackmail purposes.

Black-hat hacking, or cracking, is the act of compromising the security of a system without permission from an authorized party, usually with the intent of accessing computers connected to the network (the somewhat similar activity of defeating copy prevention devices in software - which may or may not be illegal depending on the laws of the given country - is actually software cracking). The term cracker was coined by Richard Stallman to provide an alternative to abusing the existing word hacker for this meaning. Hackers are not the same as crackers, as hackers do not participate in illegal activities and only modify software (typically of the Open Source variety).

Cracking techniques can vary from using advanced programming skills and social engineering to using semi-automatic cracking software developed by others without understanding how it works. The latter type of cracker is often referred to as a script kiddie (unskilled crackers are far more common than highly skilled ones). Common software weaknesses exploited by crackers include buffer overflows.

The opposite of a black hat hacker is a white hat hacker.

The reference to colored hats comes from Hollywood’s use of hats in old black-and-white Western movies to help an audience differentiate between the good guys (white hats) and the bad guys (black hats).

A brown hat hacker is one who thinks before acting or commiting a Malice or Nonmalice deed.

See also

• Hacker (computer security)
• White hat
• Grey hat
• Security cracking
• Hacker definition controversy
• Crackers (convicted)
• The Jargon File's Entry on Crackers