Were done discussing the White and Black Hat Hacker, now we
are going to hybrid those two that will fall under the Grey Hat Hacker (or Gray
Hat Hacker). Grey Hat Hacker based on SecPoint website: What is a Grey Hat?,
“In the hacking community, a grey hat refers to a proficient and
tech-savvy hacker who is ambivalent enough to sometimes use his program
manipulating skills to act illegally in either good or ill will.” “Their intentions for hacking
don't usually delve into any of the traditional well-intentioned or maliciously
driven extremes; that is, they may or may not commit crimes from time to time
during the course of their digital undertakings, so they're not exclusively
indulging on any one type of activity like their security-improving or network-destroying
counterparts would.” From this, Grey Hat
Hackers are in between the two and it is in grey hat hacker hands what he or
she will prefer to be. But can you imagine what can grey hat hacker really do? And
why they chose to be in between those two? (White and Black Hat Hacker).
Another lines from SecPoint website: What is a Grey Hat?,
“One of the reasons why a grey hat would
categorize himself as "grey" is to distance himself from the two
opposing hacker spectrum white and black, constructive or malicious. For
instance, even though a grey hat could gain unauthorized access to a network
(an illegal crime in most jurisdictions), he could, at the same time, provide a
patch for the exposed vulnerability that allowed him access in the first place
without compromising the system he invaded. Also, grey hats may or may not
disclose vulnerabilities to the administrators or the general public, or they
could even sell them to either white hats or black hats if they so choose.”
Here, grey hat hackers are still cracker on which they also exploits a security
weakness in a computer system or product in order to bring the weakness to the
attention of the owners but what they do is that they act without malicious
intent and their goal is to improve system and network security. However, by
publicizing a vulnerability, the gray hat may give other crackers the
opportunity to exploit it. Unlike white hat hacker who alerts system owners and
vendors of a vulnerability without actually exploiting it in public. (Based on SearchSecurity:
gray hat or grey hat).
On this part, Grey hat hacker are considered also as one of
the ethical hackers in the hackers’ community. They are the one who mostly
formed group of hacktivist on which from forums, to organizations, this group
also lead into Hacktivist world on which they have their own set of rules and
hack into some systems as a form of protest. One of those famous known group on
which can also be considered part of this are the Anonymous.
We can see lot of them do protest on the government websites. They also have
this kind of quotations, The Mentor
quotes: “We explore and you call us criminals. We seek after knowledge and you call us
criminals...Yes, I am a criminal. My
crime is that of curiosity...My crime is that of outsmarting you, something
that you will never forgive me for (Mentor, para. 9).” This is an informal
attempt to record some kind of record of motivation can be found in the short
essay titled "The Conscience of a Hacker" written on January 8th,
1986 and published in the online hacker magazine Phrack, more famously known as
"The Hacker Manifesto". The essay became a cornerstone of hacker
culture and is probably still the most well-known essay on hacking in
existence.
Hacktivism
which is still under this grey hat hacker is the development and use of
technology to foster human rights and the open exchange of information, or more
simply 'hacking for political purposes'. Brought into the mainstream by the
hacker group Cult of the Dead Cow (cDc) in the mid-1990s and widely defined as
a form of grey-hat hacking due to its sometimes quasi-legal nature, the term
'hacktivism' is often abused misused similar to its cousin 'hacking'; this
leads to a dirtying of the public perception of the word. However, the genesis
of 'hacktivism' was a benign one. We can see lot of anonymous now a days on the
internet since technology runs fast. Communicating and expressing one’s self or
as a group which is against the political state of the country can be done now
through online. And by using the hacking tools and skills they have, they show
it in public. Mostly of the domains they used were from the government websites
since their request will be heard directly from all those government sectors. Around
the globe, there are lot of Anonymous groups and they do this things not just
for their own privileges but also for other people in worldwide web community.
 |
Sony sites offline after Anonymous attack threats |
Moreover with this Anonymous,
“Beginning in 2008, Anonymous started
promoting collaborative global hacktivism by performing combined protests to
promote freedom of Internet speech. Anonymous group activities are managed by
unidentified yet self-attributed Anonymous members. Internet forums and image
boards are key sources for Anonymous recruitment, as well as wikis and other
Internet Relay Chat (IRC) networks. Anonymous uses such mediums to communicate
and organize protests.” We cannot really dictate anonymous as a black hat
hacker or even white hat hacker because he or she may use his or her skills for
legal or illegal acts, but not for personal gains. Grey hackers use their
skills in order to prove themselves that they can accomplish a determined feat,
but never do it in order to make money out of it. While I’m searching for some
reading about this grey hat hackers, I found a website on which they are into
grey hat but for security purposes and group of grey hat hacker community. It
is the Greyhat Security. The site
show their legal purpose and uses of their website and the two main purposes of
it were Education and Teach advanced techniques to legal Penetration Testers.
You can view and read it here: Legal
for further research about that website.
Lastly, Grey
or Gray Hat Hacking also have a book about ethical hacking. Based on
reviews about this book (Gray
Hat Hacking: The Ethical Hacker’s Handbook), “It is an ethical hacker’s handbook which combines a highly
pedagogical approach with advanced knowledge of security vulnerability,
discovery, and exploitation. The process of discovering and exploiting security
vulnerabilities is a multiphase one: first, a series of laws must be considered
and addressed, to avoid legal prosecution. Next, a network must be scanned, and
potentially vulnerable machines detected. The final phase is exploitation,
where vulnerable applications are injected with user-controlled data, and the
underlying machine is “owned.” These phases are common to both black hats and professional
penetration testers, hired for assessment and testing purposes. The authors
describe all of these phases in great detail.” Being ethical in what we do
is really important because it is where other people and society measures on
how you respect yourself as an individual.
