Black hat Black hat A black hat hacker (or black-hat hacker) is a hacker who "violates computer security for little reason beyond maliciousness or for personal gain". The term's origin is often attributed to hacker culture theorist Richard Stallman (though he denies coining it) to contrast the exploitative hacker with the white hat hacker who hacks protectively by drawing attention to vulnerabilities in computer systems that require repair. The black hat/white hat terminology originates in the Western genre of popular American culture, in which black and white hats denote villainous and heroic cowboys respectively. Black hat hackers are the stereotypical illegal hacking
Hacker Hacker A computer hacker is any skilled computer expert that uses their technical knowledge to overcome a problem. While "hacker" can refer to any skilled computer programmer, the term has become associated in popular culture with a "security hacker", someone who, with their technical knowledge, uses bugs or exploits to break into computer systems. Reflecting the two types of hackers, there are two definitions of the word "hacker": Today, mainstream usage of "hacker" mostly refers to computer criminals, due to the mass media usage of the word since the 1980s. This includes what hacker slang calls "script kiddies", people breaking