Why Did the Hacker Cross the Road?

The age old question of “why did the chicken cross the road?” This random question has been asked time and time again by many people. This question really has less to do with chickens, it’s more of a question of why do hackers do what they do?

It depends on which type of hacker you look at really.

Black Hat Hacker

The black hat hacker is someone who is set out to be malicious and violate security for notoriety or personal gain. This is typically what you think of when you think of the term ‘hacker’, a young man sitting in a dark basement, pizza boxes and soda cans strewn about the place, wearing a hoodie with a smirk on his face. Do a Google images search for hacker, you will see images just like I described.

A black hat hacker can either be as described above or someone totally normal looking, as mentioned in a previous article. These cyber criminals are the deviants of the online community; just like your local community has its less than desirable members that keep the police busy, black hat hackers play the same role on the Internet. The only main difference with online is like the Wild West. There are certain agencies that police the internet, but the hacker could be on the other side of the world, in a country far-far away.

This makes it easier to commit the crimes and steal the data. It also makes it very hard to control from a government standpoint. The only real force that can get in a black hat hackers way is a good security system or authentication roadblocks. Once the data is stolen it can be sold on the black market for some serious cash and notoriety. Once a black hat hacker builds a name for themselves, they can build a career for themselves by working for an organized crime syndicate. Think of it like a hit man for big data.

White Hat Hacker

On the other side of the coin you have the white hat hacker, think of a white night. The white night comes in to save the day on his trusty stead! This group of hackers recognizes that the powers and skills they have can be used for good and protecting society from evil. Some would even call the white hat hacker a “hacker attacker,” much like this blog’s name.

The white hat hacker is motivated to help companies and people prevent the black hat hackers from interrupting their lives. There is even an organization just for this group of individuals, the EC-Council; this organization promotes and even certifies people to become ethical hackers.

The ethical, white hat hacker usually works within an organization and has the responsibility to perform penetration testing on software, computer systems, and/or the network. Once the penetration testing has been performed, the ethical hacker then takes that information and reports back to the developers to perform patches and fixes to the exposed problems.

Crossing over

Black hat hackers can make the switch and it does happen more often than you think. Kevin Poulsen was a black hat hacker that is known for cracking into a phone system to win a Porsche, after his five year jail sentence he emerged from prison a changed man. He then turned his focus to being a white hat hacker, helping track down sex offenders on MySpace and even assisting with the designing of SecureDrop, an anonymous open-source whistleblower submission system for media outlets to receive information.

There have even been reports of black hat hackers crossing over to become FBI informants. The FBI is not shy about advertising these positions either; there is a job posting currently on their website for a Cyber Special Agent, now that is a cool title to put on your resume.

This leaves the question which side are you on? Good or evil?