Different classes of Hackers

Like i have discussed in earlier posts about How to become a hacker and things you should know before you decide to become a hacker. Its time to go a little bit deep and look into different types of hacker’s classes.

Depending on their skills and expertise, hackers are normally divided into following classes.

Script kiddies

In hacker society a script kiddies are unskilled personals who use scripts or programs generated by others to attack systems and networks and deface websites. Script kiddies are considered to be leaches who lack the ability to write sophisticated hacking programs or exploits on their own.

Today’s internet is overwhelmed with forums and social networking platforms where gazillion exploits and scripts are available generally written by professional programmers to accomplish special tasks. These guys just take and use them in a pre-defined manner. For example there are thousands of SQL injection vulnerable sites available out there which can be found using online SQL scanners and google . Once a vulnerable site is found, A script kiddie would test different SQL injecting methods which he might have been learning out there.

Their objectives are generally to impress a group of audience  though there is no doubt that some of these kids later appear to be some real black hat hackers. So technically speaking, script kiddie is the phase through which every up-coming hacker has to pass once in a while.

Black Hats

Black hats aka crackers are individuals with extra ordinary computing skills. These guys use their skills to seek weaknesses in systems and networks.

Black hats are nightmares of any huge organization who is dealing with a large database of People’s confidential information. These guys are undisputed kings of DoS (Denial of Service) Attacks (which is a bad dream of any network security expert). Wallchalking, Bluejacking,  lockpicking, Buffer overflows, sniffing and SQL injections are some additional features which make them more sneaky and stealth expert, giving bad headaches to people responsible of maintaining securities.

There are several reason for what these guys turn to be hackers. Read my article Hacktivism (Underground Hacking Activists)  for more information.

White Hats

Whits hats aka ethical hackers, pen-testers, security experts are  the guys who use their skills against Black hats and make efforts to prevent their organizations from unwanted intrusions. These good guys are all equipped with expertise to scan networks in a controlled environment to seek vulnerabilities.

For today’s converged and complex networks, its not an easy job for developers to make their systems fool proof and vulnerability free while they have to focus on lots of other development stuff. Therefore large database organizations hire white guys to do their security audits.

You might also like: Good Guy vs Bad Guy

Gray Hats

Now there is another species of hackers which is fusion of black hats and white hats. 

Yes! you guessed it right. Gray hats work both defensively and offensively at various times. In day light they could be a white collar guy having a job in a security firm while in nights they are active members of underground hacking societies with weird aliases.

No one would ever come to know that a well suited man he met in his office on monday could be a black hat in night. These guys always remain privacy concerned and would never appear in  daylight.

Over the years, meanings this term ‘Gray hats’ has being changed. During 2006, the term was used to describe freelance hackers who browse the Internet in search of security holes and then ask the owner of website for fixation charges.

Suicidal Hackers

Another uncommon genre of attackers who are always ready to bring down critical structures and are not afraid of getting nabbed and spending their next 30 years of life in prison. Again there may be several causes for folks to turn into suicidal hackers.

So what side you are on ? Don’t forget to leave your comments in comment section below