Post by Anđela Milenković 
July 9, 2024 | 
Hacking often refers to an activity initiated by a threat actor that aims to compromise digital services. When discussing hacking as an action, it is always characterized as a malicious act that aims to harm an individual or an organization.
Hackers usually do not respect the law and are there to harm others. They work for financial gain by selling data, for excitement, or to take revenge on someone. The truth is that these are their main goals. Hackers are most often associated with malicious activities, but this is not always the case. Hacking can have different goals and motivations and can be initiated by different hackers. This means that hacking can also be ethical, helping businesses and people stay as safe as possible.
Hackers are often represented by the general public as people with malicious intent.
There are many types of hackers with different motivations, purposes, and skills. Some of them do not have any malicious intent and work to help companies and individuals. In this blog post, we describe different types of hackers through a colored “hat” system.
White hat hackers
White hat hackers are ethical hackers. These are cybersecurity professionals that organizations employ to perform ethical hacking simulations that mimic real attacks. This type of hacker helps organizations improve their defenses against attacks and reduces the chance of cyber attacks by ensuring continued confidentiality, integrity, and business availability. They constantly learn about the latest cyber threats and test assets within the organization to find and fix potential vulnerabilities. Statistics show that white hat hackers are mostly young people who are already making significant money by finding bugs in systems before they are discovered by malicious actors.
Black hat hackers
Black hat hackers are those who perform malicious activities to cause harm to an individual or an organization. These are criminals who often aim to gain unauthorized access to an organization’s data and steal confidential information to sell and profit from it. They engage in various illegal activities, including sending malware through phishing emails and SMS messages. They also deploy various types of attacks to steal confidential information and disrupt the company’s services. Like white hat hackers, they look for vulnerabilities in systems, but they aim to exploit them.
Grey hat hackers
A grey hat hacker, as the name suggests, is a combination of a black hat and a white hat hacker, meaning they perform a mix of both black hat and white hat activities. This is a security expert who sometimes violates typical ethical standards but usually does not have malicious intent like, for example, a black hat hacker. These hackers have the skills and intent of a white hat but may break into a system or network without permission. They often search for vulnerabilities in systems without the system owner’s permission. When they find a problem, they report it and ask for a small fee to fix it. These hackers intend to show off their skills and gain recognition for their contribution to security.
Blue hat hackers
A blue hat hacker is a hacker who is hired by companies to perform penetration testing and find vulnerabilities in their systems or products. The difference between a white hat hacker and a blue hat hacker is that white hat hackers are usually part of a company, while blue hat hackers are outsourced. The purpose of a company hiring these hackers is to ensure that their product has no obvious or known vulnerabilities when it reaches end users.
Green hat hackers
Green hat hackers are beginners in the world of hacking and are generally part of a larger group of ethical hackers whose goal is to find vulnerabilities and assess risks within a system. They are especially important because they bring fresh ideas that more experienced hackers may not have considered before. Their disadvantage is that they have no experience and are unaware of the potential consequences of their actions. They are not a big threat to enterprises because they still need to gain great knowledge or malicious intent.
Red hat hackers
Red hat hackers are hackers whose reasons for hacking are political, social, religious, or ideological. They stand up for what is right and target cybercriminals (black hat hackers) to disable their criminal activities and make them pay for their crimes. They use the same tools as black hat hackers, which include botnets, malware, social engineering, and exploits of vulnerabilities. Sometimes they can team up with other hackers if their views on some issues align.
Conclusion
In this blog, we talked about the differences between the types of hackers. Now we understand that they are not all the same. Some are malicious and use their knowledge and skills to exploit other people and businesses. While others work day and night to protect us from those malicious hackers. There are also red hat hackers who use an aggressive approach and go to any extent to destroy black hat hackers.
The term “hacker” isn’t always synonymous with a malicious person with a black hoodie. When we hear this term, before jumping to conclusions, we should ask what kind of hacker is being discussed.
