Grey Hats

The line between different kinds of hackers is rarely a clean one. While white hats and black hats sit at opposite ends of the spectrum, a large group of people fall somewhere in the middle. These are the grey hats — hackers who are neither clearly ethical nor clearly malicious, but who operate in a neutral zone between the two.

Grey hats hack systems by exploiting their vulnerabilities, just like black hats do. The crucial difference is their motive. They do not hack for monetary gain, nor do they hack for political reasons. Instead, they treat system security as a personal challenge and hack purely for the fun of it. The thrill of breaking into a system, finding a weakness, or proving that a defence can be bypassed is what drives them. …