White Hat Vs. Black Hat

[joedimatt]

Out of curiousity, and the fact that every newcomber assumes that every hacker is a black hat hacker, I was curious what the actual percentage was. Please vote in the poll, maybe even say why you are what you are or something interesting you do or are good at.

[Decay]

WHAT'S THE DIFFRENCE BETWEEN HACKERS AND WHY ARE THEY LABLED AS DANGEROUS !?

Oh the hacker stereotype.
Over the past few years hacking has become more popular to teenagers and adults. People are interrested because Internet users fear hackers.
Now note: Not everyone fears hackers.
Hackers aren't the violent ones crackers are but people don't know that.
I'm sure when people red the Mike Calce (aka MafiaBoy) topics in the newspapers they came to FEAR hackers.
An average computer gets hacked ,say every 50 seconds (this does not mean that he hacks/viruses/scripts are fonctional or were released).

When someone knows nothing of the internet except it being dangerous they will follow the stereotype in general.
Journalists never really explained that most hackers won't really go after people. If you tell a hacker face to face in real life that you're a cracker he willl probably dropkick you in the face . But that is out of the subject.

White hat hackers will test your computer security, firewalls, anti-virus etc.
Black hat hackers, pfft ? Like they give a shit if you open a file they placed a trojan in ? One more infected computer to add to their botnet.

BASICLY IF YOU DIDN'T WANNA READ ALL THAT; hackers have been labled DANGEROUS to society. It could take a while for the entire world to realise that not all hackers are the same, they're people as well.


To answer the what I am question; I'm not classified as a hacker and rather like to keep it that way. I maphack, hex, stat modify, bypass, vac games.
I am NO good at scripting; even worse for mIRC or BitchX.


Another useless and completely long post by Decay.

[Demon]

back in the day..i would say hackers were a greater threat against personel pcs..as well as bussinesses...that being blackhat attacks..and as well some grey hat actions......but now...id have to say ones biggest threat is more from big bussiness...ex: spywares..etc. much has changed over the years.

still thru it all...hackers still seem to take the rap. maybe because you have those types working for the big biz companies creating all the spyware..malwares..ad bots..etc....but..does it make them a hacker..or just a good programmer with bad morals?

keep in mind what hacking is about when think about it.

thoughts to chew on a bit:

does one have to be 'all' about hacking to be labeled as a hacker...?..or...does one simply using even a few minimal hacking skills to be merged with other types of work they do to be labeled as such?

[Raziel]

without hackers..... we would probley have shit computers right now and a internet that barely functions.

and i say its all in the motive of why and what someone is hacking

[Ushi]

No matter how good you are, I think if you truly cross over that line into pure, "all-for-me" hacking, you're not deserving of the title hacker anymore. Why did the greats steal phone time? Usually to call up other greats and talk to them. Not like many of them had stellar social lives...

My point is, the core of hacking (in my opinion I suppose...) is the pursuit of knowledge. To hack is to give into that primal curiousity that lives and has lived within every great scientist and philosophist that has ever lived. Thus once you ignore all that and concentrate on how to make money or whatever, you've changed your goal, the light at the end of your tunnel. To me, it's nearly an abandonment of your humanity. Others would argue that it's an embracement of it, I suppose, and that the natural order of things lets the strong take from the weak. If we truly are in the digital age, we are the strong. While that makes sense, and is quite honestly an understandable justification for simply throwing in to total blackdom, just remeber one thing:

Ushi doesn't like black. :P

Anyway, to justify my own answer of grey, I'd have to say that I sometimes feel that way. That taking what I can is my right, since I can do it. I'm not all that high and moral, I don't think stealing is wrong, I just think it ends up consuming you. I don't want my end goal in life to be getting things. I want, when I take something, to have some reason for taking it. Sure, while I'm working on that coding project using your wireless I'll grab a movie or two while I'm there, or if I'm in a network I'll check if there's anything around I can use to my own advantage, so I tend to tread a line.

I feel, however, that if we can maintain that core curiousity, that spark of desire at understanding the things that make up our world, that we can maintain the assertion that we are in fact "the good guys" still.

I dunno...

[zeromod]

Ok first off If you tell a hacker in real life that you're a "cracker" you wouldn't get drop kicked in the face. Ever hear of Defcon? Secondly media aside in todays reality. Hacking is profitable. There are indeed "white hat" & "black hat" and it has almost everything to do with the fact that one is on the security professional end of the spectrum (selling vunerabilities to vendors, pen testing , ids evasion etc) where as a black hat would most likely be doing the same things possibly even selling vulns. I mean come on, you don't need to work for a security firm to fuzz some lame vendors shit. Another interesting thing is that, a skiddie is always blackhat (by definition If a skiddie doesn't know what they are doing on a process level, then they are introducting a possible dos everytime they click "hack" on theyre scripts) But although a skiddie is always blackhat, Blackhats aren't always skiddie's lol gotta love it. When it boils down to it The best thing to do is to say "Look I hack" and say fuck it to the rest of that Industry/ Forum board drama that has come from the whole black hat white hat grey hat shit. Just do what you do and fuck a label, If we have reduced ourselves to labels and class denominations then we have lost the spirit of the scene already.

[joedimatt]

I posted this and I selected grey hat. Though in truth if someone of hacking knowledge were to ask me I would say that I can't hack. I would tell them that I am a guy who can do some programming and understands networks pretty well.

When I play around on my computer, doing "hacking stuff," I am usually involved in doing things to further my education in the field. Though sometimes that mean doing some illegal things. Though one day I am thinking about working for the US Navy (I recently had a revolation and changed my course in career goals to this) making software that can be used to prevent "black hat hackers."

Labels make up our society in every aspect. It's hard to breakaway and deny all labels. You always wind up getting a label.

[Ushi]

Hacker is itself a label. Exactly like joe said, if you really want to avoid labels, better avoid human interaction. Hell, even then, your own mind is probably going to end up eating itself trying to figure out what exactly to think of itself as. That's why OOP is so second nature to anyone that just goes with it: We like to think of things as just that, objects, and in order to reference an object, it needs a name. However, if I know it's a ball (the class it's derived from can simply be thought of as its label), I know I can bounce it usually.

I agree with your sentiment, but it just isn't possible. This isn't a class structure, it's a statement of philosophy. I don't look down on true black hats. A skiddie can just as easily be a white hat network engineer. I know a few black hats, and while I disagree with their motives, I usually find their work enlightening. Their motivation for doing something is just different than mine. Like I said, I think that if they go too far, they lose something of why they started in the field, but I still won't look down on them. I get the same out of them that I'd get out of a white hat hacker, sometimes more, since money and power tend to motivate a little differently than a thirst for knowledge.

So I apologize if it looked like, or if I did, imply or say that black hats weren't hackers. They're still curious about systems and want to understand what they do and why they do it, just with motivations that confuse me sometimes. But just like that ball, they're derived from the same class, the same label, just a few different inner workings. Would I work with a black hat? That depends. On one of their projects, probably not. If my project interested them, and I knew they'd end up using it for nefarious purposes, who cares? That's help with my project I wouldn't have had.

That's why I put grey hat. I don't go out of my way to make the internet a better place. If someone's threatening my little corner of it, sure, now it's personal. But if someone's fucking with myspace, why should I care?

[Scenekiddd]

Originally Posted by Raziel

without hackers..... we would probley have shit computers right now and a internet that barely functions.

and i say its all in the motive of why and what someone is hacking

We probly wouldn't have interent at all, the interent was mostly made up by hackers