Types of hackers

Types of hackers

Cyber security is the protection shield for technology users as it fights several cyber-attacks and helps in their prevention. There are various types of cyber attackers present around us. They are generally called hackers because they are one of the cyber attackers responsible for data-stealing with the wrong intention of making money, but all hackers are not the same. Some are skilled professionals who prevent cyber-attack by back-attacking and finding the culprit. Therefore hackers are classified into various types based on their motives and types of attack.

 Let’s learn about them:-

• Black hat hackers

Black hat hackers are sharp-minded criminals who use their advanced technical knowledge to navigate the cyber security landscape where they find vulnerabilities in the computer system and software. Hackers exploit vulnerabilities for financial gain or another malicious purpose.

 These are purely criminal-minded cyber-criminals who have only one motive – to make money or profit from the data breaches.

These hackers harm individuals, organizations, or businesses by stealing sensitive data and altering critical networks.

• White hat hackers

As white is the opposite of black, their work is opposite. White hat hackers act as a savior from the black hat and other hackers. They use their technical skills to find vulnerabilities in an organization's computer system or networks before a criminal hacker. These hackers are white-collar authorized hackers hired by the government and large businesses. They prevent external attacks and data breaches on the system by finding and identifying loopholes or weaknesses found in the organizational security system.  

• Grey hat hackers

These hackers are not criminal minds nor authorized hackers; they lie in between them and use their technical hacking skills for their enjoyment. They perform hacking activities for their entertainment or enjoyment (enjoy doing hacking) and find vulnerabilities and loopholes in the computer system. They even make the owner aware of the weak points in their networks because they don't want to harm them. They find these weak points by penetrating the network or system without the owner's permission.  

• Script kiddies

These hackers hack the system with scripts available from others fellow hackers with which they hack the system, website, or network. Script kidders don't have complete knowledge; therefore, they are called juveniles. As the name defined, they are "kids" as kids use their half-knowledge to do some of the experiment, but half-knowledge is always dangerous.

Script kidders are the kid's hackers who use other notes(script) to do hacking that causes disruption, and organization with unsecured network

s and systems are their target. For example, a DDoS(Denial of service) attack is a type of script kiddies attack where a particular IP address is flooded with excessive traffic and collapses. Various black Friday shopping websites are examples of DDos where it creates confusion and allows hackers to use the services.  

• Green hat hackers

Green hat hackers are the students of hacking courses who are learning to climb up the stairs of hacking. Here hackers learn to become full-fledge hackers and find suitable opportunities to utilize their learning. These hackers are different from script kidders in terms of intention; they do not take a shortcut for conducting hacking.

• Blue hat hackers

Blue hat hackers are distinguished on their intention bases; some of the skilled blue hackers are hired by an organization to find loopholes and vulnerabilities in the system because criminals hackers find them and decimate the security system. These hired hackers apply the bug test on the new software system/ network before it’s released in the market, and if any error occurs, they try to fix it.

Some of the blue hat hackers use their hacking knowledge as a weapon to take revenge and to settle scores with their adversaries and for popularity purposes too among their colleagues. Blue hat hackers can be dangerous or saviors (truly depend on the intent of hacking).  

• Red hat hackers

There are different types of red hat hackers in the cyber security world. This type of hacker is similar to white hat hackers; government agencies hire both to do bug testing, spot weakness of the system/ network, and disarm black hat hackers. Their hacking process differentiates between them as red hat hackers are eagled-eye hackers who hunt for black hat criminals and take them down by various means. They use the same technique used by black hat hackers to counter their attacks on the machine inside out. Red hat hackers use the same tactics, malware, strategies, and viruses to stop the cybercriminals (black hat hackers) until they replace the entire system.

1. State/nation-sponsored hackers.
2. Hacktivists
3. Whistleblower/ malicious insider

• Elite hackers

Elite means "cream", elite hackers are the cream hackers in the world of hackers. They are trained and the highest skilled hackers in their field who discovered cutting-edge attack methods. They are the topmost layer of hackers considered innovators and experts in the hacking world who perform advanced cyber attacks. Here high-revenue corporations are at risk.

• Cryptojackers

Cryptojackers are parallelly known as cryptocurrency mining hackers where they exploit network vulnerabilities and steal computer resources to mine cryptocurrencies. They attack the victim's system by spreading malware in several ways and planting infectious viruses across the web without the victim's acknowledgment. After the virus hits the victim(code is planted), it sends the result back to the hacker. Cryptojackers don't steal victims' data; instead, they use the victim's system as a vehicle for cryptocurrency mining. Attack of Cryptojackers is not identified or detected as easily because the virus is plated in the system spread all over the web.   

• Gaming hackers

After the pandemic, online gaming has become the primary source of entertainment and hacking, too, as in the IT industry, gaming is one of the most profitable businesses. Gaming programming companies/organizations or individual programmers spend huge amounts of money on high-performance hardware and gaming credits. Gaming hackers apply their hacking skills and efforts to the other hacking competitors in the gaming world. Gaming hackers attack the system to steal competitors' credit caches. They also take them out of the game by causing a distributed denial-of-service attack on victims' systems. High-profile gamers are at big risk from gaming hackers.

• Botnet hackers

Botnet hackers are the large-scale hackers that create a bot for attacking. The bot is the malware code created by the malware coders (botnet hackers) to perform high-scale attacks on several devices. Botnet hackers target unsecured devices or devices having default login credentials intact. They plant bots to the devices directly (targeting cameras, routers, and another internet of things (IoT) devices. Other hackers can easily take advantage of the bot/ malware code as it can be comfortably purchased from the dark web. Due to botnet hackers, a large volume of the network system is compromised security. People using Wi-Fi-connected devices and unsecured routers are at a big risk of being attacked by botnet hackers.

Conclusion

With the tremendous use of the internet, an ever-increasing amount of information is available online, which has become the cuisine for countless types of hackers to exploit. Hackers' intent may be different, but their motives for destroying and exploiting data remain the same. So the best way to prevent your system or network from hackers is to use reliable antivirus in the device.