Without a doubt, hackers are one of the most dangerous threats to the integrity of organisations. Thus, we have covered the topic of who are hackers in this guide for you. Today, everyone has smartphones and computers with active internet connection. Unfortunately, although these devices are indispensable parts of our lives, most of us are not aware of the safety and security of our devices.
Many innovations introduced in our lives with the advancement of technology. Undoubtedly, technology provided great convenience in our lives, but it also leads to various vulnerabilities.
As MS Cyber Security, we detect these vulnerabilities in advance before hackers exploit them. If you would like to learn more about hackers, what they do, what they of hackers are there, then keep reading!
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Who Are Hackers?
Today, the hacker concept has a negative meaning in the community. It is mainly because we always see news where hackers are involved in destructive and malicious events. However, this is a misinterpreted concept with the help of the media. There are hackers with good and bad intentions.
In the simplest sense, hacking is gaining unauthorised access to the systems. On the other hand, hacking is a set of practices that are used to identify the vulnerabilities of the system and to obtain a second access path to the relevant system by using these vulnerabilities.
Considering the above-mentioned definition, they are people who have the required technical knowledge and skills and have proven his or her expertise in many areas such as system, network, software, and access the systems by using vulnerabilities of electronic-based systems or accounts on the Internet.
They are expert programmers or network and systems masters within their communities. They have decades-old culture starting from the first days of the internet. In fact, they are computer masters who are noted for their technical skills and contributing to the development of systems by identifying the vulnerabilities of the systems.
Depending on their purposes and expertise, they are divided into groups. In the following section, you can learn more about the hacker types.
What Are Hacker Types?
Hackers are just simple people who mastered their skills in different parts of the internet systems and infrastructures. Therefore, there are hackers with good or bad intentions. In general, hackers involving in cyber-crimes are not hackers but crackers.
Here are the most popular types of hackers and what they do.
White Hat Hackers or Ethical Hackers
This is the most harmless and constructive hacker type among all hackers. Just like all other hacker types, white hat hackers have the required knowledge and skills to take over any system, network, or computer in seconds.
However, once white hat hackers find all the vulnerabilities in any system they focus on, they provide detailed information to the company or person who developed that software or system before making this public.
White hat hackers contribute to the development of systems with vulnerabilities without exploiting or taking advantage of them. They are also called Ethical Hackers.
Black Hat Hackers
As you can guess, black hat hackers, are just the opposite of white hat hackers. They engage in harmful activities such as information theft, fraud, terrorism, or deliberate destruction by gaining unauthorised access to security systems.
They carry out their operations by remotely accessing a computer or cracking software. The black hat hackers cracking the software are crackers.
Grey Hat Hackers
These are the hackers that walk on a thin line. They are unpredictable and do not mind breaking laws. As some of them may have good intentions, some of them can also engage in illegal activities such as black hat hackers.
What Are Hacker Sub-Types?
The above-mentioned three types make up the basic classification for all hackers. However, depending on their purpose and expertise, these hacker types are also divided into different categories. In this section, you can find detailed information about these hacker sub-types.
Crackers
Crackers cracks the copy protection of the software and use them without the permission of the system or software owners. They are experts in programming, and they may not be knowledgeable about network security.
Hacktivists
These are the hackers that engage in hacking to attract attention to any particular social or political issue. Their purpose is to announce something bad or wrong for them and to give a message to the responsible individuals or organisations.
In any case, gaining unauthorised access to any system to access any piece of information is officially a crime and such actions should never be supported by any means.
Lamers
In fact, lamers are not hackers and it is a term often used in the hacker community. Lamer concept refers to hacker wannabees who have no idea or knowledge about hacking but trying to show off with some of the terms they have learned about hacking.
Sometimes they also gain authorised access to simple software and systems with quite fundamental techniques. Lamers are usually children, and they only aim to harm.
Script Kiddie
Script kiddie is a common term in the hacker community. They are not hackers too. However unlike lamers, script kiddie have the required knowledge and one of the most dangerous hackers.
Script kiddies mostly attack the systems and individuals and use the information they obtain for malicious purposes.
Gaining unauthorised access to systems is not a goal but a tool for them. Generally, they are the anarchists of the hacker world. They are usually responsible for attacks on many personal computers. Moreover, they tend to describe themselves as hackers and take pride.
Phreakers
Phreakers are relatively a new hacker type and you should not underestimate them. Unlike other hackers, phreakers focus on hacking phone lines to access free calls.
What Are Hacking Types?
Just like many hacker types, there are different hacking types as well. One of the most popular one among them is hacktivist actions. Below, you can find detailed information about some of the main hacking types.
Hacktivist Actions
We have provided brief information about who performs these actions in the previous section. Some hackers defend their malicious actions with excuses such as political, religious, social, or environmentalist reasons.
They can use any incident as an excuse to carry out cyber-attacks on large companies, organisations, and even governments to cause great damage.
One of the biggest fears of international brands or governments is hacktivist actions.
Cracking
Cracking is a set of practices implemented to break and distribute the copies of the systems. Besides copying the data, they obtained from the systems, they also sell this data and even demand ransom.
The main goal here is to harm to opposite system or individuals as well as making money with the stolen data.
Malware
Mainly when black hat hackers find vulnerabilities on any system, they frequently use techniques to damage or take control of it with their malicious codes.
Many hackers are experts in software programming, and they use their skills to delete, copy, monitor, or for similar harmful activities by uploading their codes to the systems.
DDoS Attacks
Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks is the most common and most dangerous type of cyber-attacks for systems. The main purpose is this attack type is to prevent access to the system and stop all the operations within the system.
In general, they use zombie computers or malicious codes in DDOS attacks.
Phishing Attacks
In phishing attacks, hackers send a fake page to the victim in any means, and try to obtain confidential information such as username and password.
This attack type is the oldest and most dangerous type of cyber-attack in the history of the internet. In general, phishing attacks carried over e-mails.
Social Engineering Attacks
Human behaviors are vulnerabilities in social engineering attacks and they force people to make mistakes so that they can exploit these vulnerabilities later on. It is usually referred to as the art of deceiving.
Mistakes of the system users make are weaknesses and hackers can gain unauthorised access to the systems by taking the advantage of these weaknesses.
Brute Force Attacks
This attack type is password guessing attempts to gain unauthorised access to the accounts of individuals or organisations. They make billions of password attempts into a system’s password-protected area.
In this way, hackers access the accounts of system users with weak passwords. Hackers use the trial and error method in this attack type to guess simple or short passwords.
Zero-Day Attacks
Zero-day attacks are one of the most dangerous and undetected attack types. Hackers who identify the backdoor of the systems will not share these vulnerabilities with anyone.
Thus, they do not encounter any obstacles while accessing the systems. Because the method or vulnerability used is unknown, they are the most dangerous type of attack in cyber security.
As MS Cyber Security, we are always at your side with our solutions and measures to protect your systems. You can contact us at any time to get information about future partnerships.