In hacker's world we love to use our our language, our slang.
Today I will explain what are the HATS

Have you ever heard of hackers ? Crackers ? Those guys love to sneak in your code to find weaknesses, but what they do about the weaknesses they find will determine who they are.

Many people do not understand the difference between a hacker and a cracker. a hacker is someone who will act for the greater good, while the cracker will work for his own profit and won't hesitate to destroy their targets.

And that is why we divide those people in three categories :

White hats

Those are the ethical hackers, they sniff code to find entries that could be used by crackers to destroy your system with, for example, trojan horses. Their goal is to secure the Internets. Most of the time they are hired, by big companies to secure their systems.

They have nothing to fear from justice, they work completely legally and on demand.

Grey hats

This one is a bit special, as he is almost a white hat but tainted with a bit of black.

What I mean is, they do not work for companies, and they don't ask permission to try to penetrate systems, they can even build some trojans to reach their targets. But they do not do it for their profit, nor to destroy target systems.

They are more for the technical side of it, for the thrill sometimes too, and they will tell you the weaknesses they found to help you secure your system. Probably for free, even if they like gifts and beeing known.

The grey hat is the most common type of hackers, they are doing their job illegally though as they are not hired to do their tasks.

Black hats

Those diserve the Cracker name, they act for their own profit, and won't reveal the weaknesses they find but will use and abuse them. They cheat the system to pay them or some request ransoms before leaving your systems...

They are feared by most as they are dangerous, crime units are actively searching for them. They are of course outlaws.