Cyber security is at the peak importance of it’s history, daily millions and millions of attacks are happening, so it’s high time that we educate ourselves on cyber security as well as on these cyber criminals, who are known as “Hackers”. So, first of all we have to know who are “Hackers”, are they insanely criminalistic masterminds? or are they just some nerds with computers? why do they hack? so, a hacker is just someone who finds a flaw in any system, which he can use for his own advantage or to modify behavior of that system which isn’t intended. For example, a bottle can be used to store some water, but if someone can use bottles as a small bag then that will be something that the bottle wasn’t intended to do, so it’s a hack and the person who did this is a hacker.
Now, in respect to internet and computers, hackers are persons, who finds out flaws on systems which are connected to the internet or computers. Hackers are broadly devided into many categories based on some parameters, like their intentions, their hacking techniques, their focus point bandwidth. Here we’re going to discuss about 15 types of hackers below, lets see how many have you heard of before from the list.
A legendary hacker who hacked the bottle design (just kidding)
So, let’s dive into categories of hackers directly –
1. Black Hat Hackers
When you first think of hackers, the image comes to mind is possibly a shady criminalistic one, that’s because of these type of hackers. These are not very different on their skillsets than most of the other hackers in this list, but what makes them different is their intent. In layman’s terms, these hackers hack with bad intentions, they harm people, companies and agencies for their own profit, no ethics is there for these people. The only thing that motivates them to hack is their own profit.
2. White Hat Hackers
Where there is bad, there must be good also. So, white hat hackers are the exact opposite of black hat hackers, they hack for good. Generally, these hackers are hired to hack systems before they are hacked by evil hackers. So, skillset wise these are almost same, but the intent is different, white hats disclose any flaws they find in systems to their owners and work together with them to fix that. White hats always work with permission of the owner.
3. Grey Hat Hackers
There are always people who are a blend of good and bad things (If you are a Marvel fan, you can think of loki), hackers are no different to this. Somewhere in the middle of white hats and black hats there are grey hat hackers, they mostly don’t harm their targets and find out flaws in systems, so you might think what differs them from white hats? well, the answer is most grey hat hackers don’t bother to ask for permissions from the owner before hacking their targets. So, although they aren’t posing threats, still this is not entirelly ethical to do. These hackers mostly findout flaws without permissions, and then disclose it to the owner.
4. Bug Bounty Hunters
These are hackers, who are similar to white hat hackers, some companies like to not hire some limited numbered people, instead they publish a responsible disclosure program or a bug bounty program, where they define some guidelines which the hackers has to follow in terms to hack their system. You may ask why don’t these companies hire hackers directly? the answer is they can hire only limited people, but with the program public their will be huge number of hackers who’ll try to hack into their systems, which will make the systems more secure as it’s tested by more hackers. And, the hackers are paid only if they find out any vulnerabilities in the system, so both of the sides are happy in this way.
5. Green Hat Hackers
These are hackers who are just starting out their journey, and aspires to become very skilled in hacking. They mostly work to learn hacking. These are hungry for knowledge, and to be at where they want to be, they sometimes look for very skilled hackers (even black hats) and asks them to teach about hacking techniques. It depends on after having the knowledge what, they will actually become – white hat , grey hat or black hat.
6. Blue Hat Hackers
Blue hat hackers are a type of white hat hackers, who’s task is to check newly developed softwares or systems for security vulnerabilities before it actually hits the real world. These are again hired by companies or agencies to work on their products, and mostly these are the first type of hackers who actually try to hack a system before any other types mentioned here tries the same.
7. Red Hat Hackers
Red hats hackers are government hired hackers, who are there to defend government systems and data against black hat hackers. They generally approach a target in very similar ways as a black hat hacker would do. But, they defend against black hats, and if there is a need to take down a black hat hacker, who has already exploited a system or stolen some government secrets, these are the go-to guys for government to take down that malicious hacker.
8. Nation/State Sponsored Hackers (Intelligence)
These are hackers who again work for state or nation’s governments. They differ from red hats, as these are not defenders but these hackers work as an intelligence for their nation or state. They generally hack to get any possible attack informations, or to find out any terrorism informations and things like these. Sometimes, these hackers are used to get sensitive information of another country as well.
9. Whistleblower Hackers
These are hackers who work for an employer or an organization, and they have an advantage that they have more visibility into the systems than other public eyes. So, because of any personal problems with someone or if they find out that the organization is doing something unethical or shady, then they hack further and leak the informations as per their decisions.
10. Hacktivists
Hacktivists are politically opinionated hackers, who uses hacking as a form of protest against the government or to highlight a social cause. These hackers believe, they are hacking-activists, thus the name – “hacktivists”. These hackers only hack based on their ideology, if something feels wrong to them, they’ll hack and showcase that to the world, just like protests are done.
11. Elite Hackers
These hackers are the top 1% of black hat hackers, they are very knowledgeable and skilled in their art of hacking. These are mostly not for hire, and they work at their will, they often perform the most advanced and severe cyberattacks, which causes destruction to some organizations or a high profile individual. With the dark side, also these are the most intellectual hackers on planet earth as well, as they are the innovators and originators of most advanced attacks.
12. Cryptojackers
These hackers mostly target individuals with less secured systems and networks, and then they inject malware or viruses into the victim’s system which mines cryptocurrency in the background using resources of the victim’s computer without the owner’s knowledge. So, if you have an extremely slow computer and you can’t find out why, possibly there can be someone who’s using your resources, a good option would be to have a great malware defender and a good antivirus to protect your system.
13. Script Kiddies
These are possibly the most amateur hackers in this list, but also in the top 3 of most dangerous ones as well. You may be thinking how’s that even possible, right? the thing is, these hackers most of the times does not understand what they are doing, they doesn’t have a working understanding of the attacks they are performing, they just use other people’s scripts. The dangerous thing is, if they doesn’t want to harm a target, still they can harm the target very critically as they don’t understand what they are doing, so these are one of the dangerous hackers in this list.
14. Gaming Hackers
These hackers mostly hack for fun or to beat someone within the gaming reality. They do not possess very malicious intentions, if a game provides upgrades in exchange for money, they might try to hack it. If, a game is played between 100 players live, then these hackers might try to slow down other peoples interactions within the game to win that. So, mostly it’s for fun purpose.
15. Botnet Hackers
These type of hackers plant malwares on very large numbered systems, maybe even on millions of systems sometimes, and the compromised systems become “zombie systems” or “botnets” controlled by the attacker. Then the attacker uses these systems to perform DDOS or Distributed Denial Of Service attacks on very secure or high profile organizations themself, or they can even let others use these botnets for money.
So, in the modern day of web3, blockchains, cryptocurrencies, metaverse and internet of things (IoT) the cyber space is expanding each and every seconds, this is the new revolution and needed for the future of the humanity as well but alongside that the dark side of these are also expanding, so we’ve to be most secure possible in this emerging cyberspace. That’s only possible if we understand security and give importance to it. You can invest in a good malware defender and an antivirus to protect yourself against these threats, but still think before clicking on any unknown links or before opening an unknown file as that single click can compromise your entire security in the cyber space.
We are Cipher Warriors Security, our goal is to make a safer internet and cyber space for all, so if you need our help don’t hesitate to contact us via the form below. Don’t forget to let us know via commenting below, which of the hackers you heard about earlier and which of them you heard first time after reading this post. Also, if you are interested in Cyber Security, Ethical Hacking and Bug Bounties we’ll ask you to follow our other blogs, we talk about everything a to z on security, if you want to become a bug bounty hunter or ethical hacker follow our blogs, we’re planning to launch a course free here, blogs which will guide you how to become successfull in both assuming you know nothing on cyber security till now. Support us, via commenting as that motivates us, and if you share this post with others that’ll motivate us even more. We are a community, let’s make the internet safer for everyone.