The White, Black, and Grey Hats of Cyber Security

Have you ever heard people in the cyber world talk about white hat, black hat, and grey hat and wondered what they were referring to and what does it mean?

Well, here is a quick and dirty explanation of each one.

Black Hat

The black hat hackers are the bad actors. They’re the ones who send phishing emails, steal passwords, perform ransomware attacks and much more. Their reasons for illegally hacking into systems can range from simply testing their hacking skills to squeezing thousands to millions of dollars from their victims through ransomware attacks.

White Hat

White hat hackers are just as highly skilled as black hat hackers. But, they use their knowledge and skills to protect businesses from black hat hackers. Many of them work for companies and the government, protecting these entities from various attacks and proactively plugging up vulnerabilities before the bad actors can get to them.

Grey Hat

Grey hat hackers are also the good guys… sort of. They can choose to ask companies for permission to penetrate their networks and internal systems and report their findings. Alternatively, they can choose to simply penetrate these networks and systems without permission, later report their findings, and then offer assistance in plugging those vulnerabilities. Some even ask for money in return for their “good deed” before they’ll deliver the findings to the company.

So there you have it! These are the common cyber hats that hackers ‘wear’. There are additional hacker hats our there. I’ll do a writeup on those hats in the near future.

I hope you enjoyed this quick-read!