What’s the Difference Between Black-Hat and White-Hat Hackers?
The word hacking is often taken negatively, and people get some bad vibes from it. Take, for instance, the example of media; they take a hacker as a cyber-criminal who is hacking into the computer or system of someone without his permission with wrong intentions. But this is not the case. Hacking is not always negative or a crime. Every person who bypasses any device’s security measures using their knowledge of hardware and software is a hacker. What’s the Difference Between Black-Hat and White-Hat Hackers? This is a crucial question that needs to be answered.
You need to know that hacking is not illegal or bad unless the person is trying to access someone’s information or breaking someone’s personal space without his permission. To make some addition to your knowledge of hacking, we have come up with the answer to an important question in this regard, “What’s the Difference Between Black-Hat and White-Hat Hackers?” If you want to know the answer to this question, keep on reading.
What Is Hacking?
Before discussing any further, let us first get to know what actually hacking is. Hacking is simply getting assess to other’s data without their permission. Although typically, hackers’ image is a mysterious person in a black & dark room, typing some codes, zeros, and ones on a screen. But that’s just a rare case.
Hacking is as simple as someone logging into your accounts or social media handles without you knowing it. If you have forgotten to log out of your account and someone takes advantage of it and start looking into your account, that’s also hacking.
In this world of technology and digitalization, it’s important to know about all kinds of risks. This will help us in staying safe from all kinds of threats and risks. Hackers are usually divided into some categories based on their intentions and motivations. The motivations may include financial gains, some grudge against someone, and at times just fun.
To cut it short, experts have divided hacking into three categories. These are black, white, and grey-hat hackings.
What Is Black-Hat Hacking?
It is pretty easy to recognize and differentiate a black-hat hacker from all other hackers, thanks to their bad intentions. A black-hat hacker is selfish and can do any harm to others because of his personal gain. These kinds of hackers are known for stealing money from someone’s account, copying the confidential data of others, and harming a business or enterprise’s reputation.
But money or data are not always the reason behind or motivation of these hackers. The reasons are sometimes ideological. If their beliefs conflict with the beliefs of others, they will harm them in all ways possible.
Another noticeable thing is that black-hat hackers don’t only attack companies and businesses. They make personal attacks too. Fake customer support call centers and fake offering emails are prominent examples of individuals aimed at black-hat hacking.
What Is Gray-Hat Hacking?
Gray hat hackers is a pretty famous term. Since they work in the gray area, that’s why they are given the name gray-hat hackers. Talking about the working of such hackers, these hackers perform tasks that are often against the law. But the only difference between a black-hat hacker and a gray-hat hacker is the intentions and motivations. Gray hat hackers break the law just for the sake of the public. They do the hacking for some good reasons and have good intentions.
The position of gray-hat hackers is pretty ambiguous in society when it comes to morals. Some believe that breaking the law is always a crime and has no concern with intentions. But others consider it a good act to help someone and give these hackers some margin.
The methods used by gray-hat hackers are just the same as those used by black-hat hackers. These hackers are known to do tasks like leaking some information, which they believe should be known to everyone, revealing shreds of evidence against a criminal, revealing the true colors of a company, etc.
What Is White-Hat Hacking?
White-hat hacking also goes by the name ethical hacking. It is legal hacking and is by the law. White-hat hacking is used mostly by cybersecurity experts. They use this hacking to test their network and devices and protect them from white and gray hat hackers.
Unlike black and gray hat hackers, white-hat hackers don’t work on their own. In fact, they are hired by others. It can be a company or an individual. These hackers hack into their devices and networks and trace out the weak points. These types of hackers work while staying within the ethical and legal boundaries.
White-hat hackers’ motivations are financial gain from the companies or individuals they work with and making the cybersecurity department strong. The white-hat hackers not only check the hardware and software of a company’s system to make sure that it’s secure but test the company’s employees too. Various tech companies hire such hackers to test if their employees are capable or not. These ethical hackers inject a threat into the company’s employees’ software and determine if the employees are capable enough of locating and getting rid of that threat.
The worth of the ethical hacking industry has gone to $4 billion. This is because of the presence of an online set up in every other company. Ethical or white-hat hacking is a good career path. If you are interested in such stuff, we recommend you try it at least once in your life.
How Do You Keep Yourself Safe From Hackers?
You are now aware of hacking and all its categories, and your question of “What’s the Difference Between Black-Hat and White-Hat Hackers?” must be answered at this point. It’s high time to know a bit about the security and safety measures that need to be taken to keep yourself safe from any hacking.
As there is no need to save yourself from white-hat hackers, you are only left with black and gray-hat hackers. Moreover, a business can afford an ethical hacker if something comes up, but you need to keep yourself safe by taking all the necessary precautions and safety measures.
Use a Password Manager
The first and foremost thing you can do to stay protected and avoid getting hacked is to set strong passwords. But this gets difficult at times as you cannot remember a lot of login details. The best thing to do in this regard is using a trusted password manager. This will not only keep your accounts secure but save you from the hassle of remembering all the passwords. You need to remember one password, and you are sorted. You can use LastPass as it is one of the best password managers out there.
Set Self-Destruct Buttons
You may feel that self-destruct buttons are of no good, but they give you remote access to your device. They are a great thing in times when you lose your device or it gets stolen. You can remove all your data from your device through these buttons.
Stay Away from Suspicious Websites
The hackers may find a gateway to enter your device through all the compromised website. That’s why it’s always good to avoid unsecured websites. In fact, you should not even download unknown files from untrustworthy sites. In addition to this, always keep in mind not to open a link from some unknown source or any unknown link in general.
Save your Hardware
Another important thing is not to leave your devices unattended. This will save you from all the losses and threats. Physical protection of devices is equally important as the protection of the software.
Encrypt Your Devices
To avoid your personal information from getting accessed by someone, make sure to keep all your devices encrypting using a password. You should keep a lock on your smartphones, Laptops, USB, and Hard Drives, etc.
Hacking is Hard!
Hacking is always a hard thing not only to learn but to get rid of too. So, always make sure to take all the needed precautions to save yourself from a bigger loss. You never know if your data is being monitored or not. All you can do in your hold. “What’s the Difference Between Black-Hat and White-Hat Hackers?” The answer to this question will save you from a lot of threats.
