Examples of Black Hat Activity
Ok, here's the situation. You sit yourself down to your computer after a long day's work to play some games with a few of your friends. You enter your password for Windows, your desktop loads, when suddenly you are hit with an unfamiliar, red pop up box. This box is telling you that all of your local files have been encrypted, and the only way to decrypt them is to pay $600 in Bitcoin. What is happening?
It seems your computer was compromised by a particularly nasty ransomware worm, known as WannaCry. This attack that affected hundreds of thousands of computers worldwide is widely attributed to North Korea, a country known for it's hacking capabilities.
So since your computer is totally locked up, you decide to hop on your Playstation 4 in an attempt to play something on there. When you load up your PS4, however, you notice that you are unable to connect to the Playstation Network. You check your home connection and realize that there are no problems on your end. After a bit of investigating, you discover that the PSN is down, and is under a DDoS attack, or distributed denial of service. These attacks are hallmarks of black hats, and are usually done for no reason at all (other than possible revenge or infamy reasons).
What is a white hat hacker?
Ethically, legally and morally speaking, white hat hackers are "the good guys". They are the antithesis of a black hat in every single category, aside from where it really counts: technical ability. Most white hat hackers are viewed as computer security experts. In many cases, they try to actively prevent the very things black hats attempt to disrupt. They can take the form of network penetration testers and bug bounty hunters, and are also highly respected (and highly compensated) by governments, such as the United States government.
