Six Coloured hats
Simply put ‘White Hat Hackers’ are the good guys protecting against the bad guys who are known as ‘Black Hat Hackers’. ‘Grey Hat Hackers’ are somewhere in between not necessarily the bad guys but definitely not trustworthy. ‘Green Hat Hackers’ are in training, Blue Hat Hackers specialise in software. One more group exists and that’s the ‘Red Hat Hackers’ they are cyber vigilantes.
Where you have Black Hat Hackers attacking networks of all sizes you need White Hat Hackers defending against these attacks. But why are the good guys still called hackers? Because they are hackers, let me explain, to defend against attacks White Hats need to hack their own networks to check for vulnerabilities and backdoors that could be exploited.
After all if they don’t simulate the same attacks as the Black Hats they may not see their own weaknesses and end up being caught out. One entity is attacking whilst the other is defending 24 hours a day, they never stop.
Black Hat Hatters
There are other differences a ‘Black Hat Hatter’ has no moral code, no principals and no concern about the devastation they cause, sod em let them suffer mentality.
Grey Hat Hackers
Where as ‘Grey Hat Hackers’ do have some sort of moral code but greed gets the better of them mostly. It’s not about whether they should or shouldn’t, it’s more a question of how much? Not as bad but still awful.
White Hat Hackers
As White Hat Hackers are ‘the knights in shining armour’, well not quite. But they are the protectors, their shields protect us from the the lowlifes trying to exploit us at every turn.
Also see: What is Cybersecurity and How Does It Affect Your Life?
Green Hat Hackers
Then there are ‘Green Hat Hackers’ essentially these are hackers in training. Learning hacking techniques rather than just using pre-made tools.
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Blue Hat Hackers
A ‘Blue Hat Hacker’ deals in software hacking. An external cybersecurity specialist hired by a company to find security flaws in software or systems before they launch, acting like a temporary, independent ethical hacker for a specific project.
Red Hat Hackers
Lastly and definitely not least is ‘Red Hat Hackers’ who look for the bad guys. Cyber vigilantes aggressively counter-attack black hat hackers, using extreme, often illegal, methods such as viruses and DoS attacks to destroy their infrastructure, rather than just defending systems like white hats; they are driven to stop cybercriminals by any means necessary, operating outside typical rules and laws.
Summary
As you can see not everybody is a bad guy or a good guy, it’s a right mixed group. From villains to heroes, vigilantes to newbies. People with the right intentions and others with an appetite for destruction. People are people whether they are in the real world or the cyber world.
