Hacking Up-close and Personal

Hackers, contrary to the usual images depicted in many films, do not necessarily look like bespectacled nerds who have an unhealthy obsession with Battlestar Galactica or Star Trek. However, these films do show what hackers are: people who can break into computers. Like any group of individuals bound together by a common passion, there are various subgroups of hackers who have contrasting attitudes about what they can and cannot do with their abilities.

White hat hackers

White hat hackers are those who break into a computer’s security system for legitimate reasons. Organisations frequently hire them as security consultants with the job of testing a network’s weaknesses so that it can be protected with more effective counter-measures. Black hat hackers, on the other hand, use their skills to subvert IT security for the purpose of committing criminal acts such as credit card fraud and intellectual property theft. These black hats are more appropriately known as crackers to differentiate them from other types of hackers. However, all of these individuals share the same interest in hacking.