The word hacker is formed from the polysemous English verb to hack, meaning “to cut”, “to hack”, “to cut”. At the dawn of the computer era, hackers were called high-class programmers who were able to quickly figure out and fix and optimize the program code. However, over time, the meaning of the word has changed a lot.

Today, a hacker (synonym: hacker) is a specialist engaged in the destruction or circumvention of computer system defenses for the purpose of unauthorized access to information and computing resources.
Types of hackers

Classification is a thankless task, since the number of ways to divide a set into classes is almost unlimited.

Therefore, I have selected the minimum set of classifications necessary for understanding the structure of the community (from my point of view): by legality, by motivation, by specialization.

First of all, hackers are divided into two major categories (depending on whether they carry out their activities legally or illegally): these are the so-called “black hats” (c English black hat) and “white hats” (c English white hat). “Black hats” are cybercriminals. “White Hats” are IT security specialists working legally. There are also “gray hats” — this is a kind of intermediate option between black and white, whose activities are of a dubious nature on the verge of a foul (we will not dwell on it in detail).

Next, let’s look at what types hackers are divided into according to their motivation. For the “white hats”, everything is quite simple — their main goal is to make money on this as a legal job. But for the “blacks” everything is somewhat more diverse. Here stand out:

The bad guys are the bulk, cybercriminals. Their goal is to steal your confidential information or, for example, money. They are driven by questionable morality and a thirst for quick profit.