Black hat

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A black hat hacker (or black-hat hacker) is a hacker who "violates computer security for little reason beyond maliciousness or for personal gain".^[1]

The term was coined by hacker culture theorist Richard Stallman to contrast the exploitative hacker with the white hat hacker (or white-hat hacker) who hacks protectively by drawing attention to vulnerabilities in computer systems that require repair.^[2] The black hat/white hat terminology originates in the Western genre of popular American culture, in which black and white hats denote heroic and villainous cowboys respectively.^[3]

Black hat hackers are the stereotypically illegal hacking groups often portrayed in popular culture, and are "the epitome of all that the public fears in a computer criminal".^[4] Black hat hackers break into secure networks to destroy, modify, or steal data, or to make the networks unusable for authorized network users.^[5]

See also

• Security hacker

References