From: Thet Soe
EMail: bookwormz_99@yahoo.com
THE WHITE, THE BLACK AND THE GREY
There are essentially three types of hackers.
White-hat hackers grew out of the concept of a professional hacker. Since the 70s, a number of government laboratories and even some corporations have deployed so-called tiger teams -- special groups of employees who test computer security by trying to compromise a system or bring it down in a sort of digital war game.
Black-hat hackers adhere to the basic philosophy that information should be free -- including information about security weaknesses. For these people, "breaking into a system or exposing a system's weaknesses in literal terms, is a good thing because truth and knowledge should win out in the long run", said Mr Dan Farmer, a network security specialist.
Grey-hat hackers straddle both worlds. They sometimes act like malicious hackers, but in pursuit of some greater good, whether real or imagined. Such is the case with a group of hackers in Cambridge, Massachusetts, who call themselves L0pht (pronounced "loft"). When L0pht detects a vulnerability, the group publishes an advisory on its Web site. But the description of the security flaw was usually detailed enough for other, perhaps more malicious, hackers to use in carrying out an attack. At the same time, the group published a solution that told network administrators how to close the hole.