Who are Hackers?

A person who gets into a system or application, with or without permission, to gain access to use the functionality available or to gain some information from the system or application is termed as a Hacker. A hacker can have different intentions to hack into a system, depending on this a hacker is divided into various categories as given below:

1. White Hat Hackers
2. Black Hat Hackers
3. Gray Hat Hackers
4. Green Hat Hackers
5. Red Hat Hackers
6. Script Kiddies
7. Hacktivist

Classification of Hackers

1. White Hat Hackers

They are professional and authorized hackers. They are purposely told to hack into system of various organization to check whether there are some loop hole in their system or not. So that they can be fixed and cannot be hacked by any malicious hacker who can use there data for getting getting money by selling the data. White Hat Hackers have a very good knowledge of this field.

2. Black Hat Hackers

They are also very knowledgeable in this field, but they use their skill to get data for some malicious work. They can use the information gathered or can even damage the system or the server which they have hacked. Hence they are categorized as criminals, because they hack into system without the permission and use the information for malicious work.

3. Gray Hat Hackers

There are the hacker which falls between Black Hat Hackers and White Hat Hackers, on the basis of their intentions. These are not certified hacker, but they hack into system to get information for themselves and do not have an intention to harm any organization.

4. Green Hat Hackers

There hackers are in the learning state and they hack into some system or networks as their learning process. Their aim is not to gain information from any organization but to practice to become an authorized hacker, i.e., White Hat Hackers.

5. Red Hat Hackers

Red Hat Hackers are often called as 'Eagle-Eyed Hackers'. Their main target is to stop the Black Hat Hackers. They are also similar to White Hat Hackers, but differ in once aspect. White Hat hackers hack into system in an elegant manner, they take care that the system does not get damaged, but, Red Hat Hackers hack into system in a ruthless manner, they don't care about the system and keep attacking on the system of the Black Hat Hackers.

6. Script Kiddies

These are hackers who do not have enough knowledge about hacking and use some pre written codes to hack into systems. These can be harmful for themselves as well as for the organizations as they do know what the code is exactly doing.

7. Hacktivist

These type of hackers have sufficient knowledge about hacking. They hack into government websites and get information for from that and uses those information for political or social gain.