Based on the hacker’s motive and legality of actions, they are divided into three types:
- Black Hat: These hackers are responsible to create malware; they gain unauthorized access in a system or network and harm its operations and steal sensitive information.
- White Hat: These hackers are also known as ethical hackers; they’re often employed by companies or government agencies to find out the vulnerabilities. They never intend to harm the system instead find out the weaknesses in the network/system as part of penetration testing and vulnerability assessments.
- Grey Hat: These hackers are a blend of both white hat and black hat hackers; they find out the vulnerabilities in a system without the owner’s permission or knowledge. Their intention is to bring the weaknesses in the system to the owner's attention and demand some compensation or incentive from the owner.
Apart from the above well-known hackers, there are miscellaneous hackers based on what they hack and how they do it:
- Hacktivist: The person who utilizes technology for announcing social, religious, or political messages. Mostly hacktivism includes website defacement or denial-of-service attacks.
- Script Kiddie: The one who enters into the computer system using the automation tools written by others and has less knowledge of the underlying concept, hence the term kiddie.
- Elite Hackers: This is a social message among hackers that describes the most skilled ones. Recently identified exploits will circulate among these hackers.
- Neophyte: They are also known as green hat hacker or newbie who has no knowledge about the workings of technology and hacking.
- Blue Hat: The one who is outside of computer security consulting firms try to attempt a bug-test to a system before its launch to find out the weaknesses and close the gaps.
- Red hat: They are a blend of both black hat and white hat hackers, usually employed by top security agencies, government agencies, etc., that fall under the category of sensitive information.
