If you believe in Hollywood or Bollywood movies, hackers are all impossibly beautiful slobs who regularly break into top-secret networks just for lulz. If you believe stock photography, they're literally cat burglars who put on a ski mask then steal your credit cards online. Either way, they're not the most trustworthy people in the world. But in reality, you can make a pretty good living as a hacker—and you don't even have to break the law to do it.
Black Hat HackerS
It might seem strange that hackers would be so concerned with the color of each others' hats. The key is to think of them as actors in an old-timey Western, where the good guys always wear white cowboy hats and the bad guys wear black ones. Basically, a white-hat hacker is someone who discovers vulnerabilities in a system and informs the developers so that they can fix them. They often work in tandem with the developer, and only break into systems when they have permission to do so. A black-hat hacker, on the other hand, is closer to the usual stereotype—somebody who discovers vulnerabilities and exploits them for personal gain. A gray hat is somewhere in between, breaking into systems despite not necessarily having permission, but also without the malicious intent of a black hat.
