Hackers aren’t inherently bad — the word “hacker” doesn’t mean “criminal” or “bad guy.” Geeks and tech writers often refer to “black hat,” “white hat,” and “gray hat” hackers. Black-hat hackers, or simply “black hats,” are the type of hacker the popular media seems to focus on. Black-hat hackers violate computer security for personal gain (such as stealing credit card numbers or harvesting personal data for sale to identity thieves) or for pure maliciousness (such as creating a botnet and using that botnet to perform DDOS attacks against websites they don’t like.) White-hat hackers are the opposite of the black-hat hackers. They’re the “ethical hackers,” experts in compromising computer security … Continue reading Chris Hoffman