1 00:00:00,299 --> 00:00:01,257 Hackers. 2 00:00:01,257 --> 00:00:03,543 There are five types of hackers that you have to 3 00:00:03,543 --> 00:00:06,070 recognize for the Security+ exam. 4 00:00:06,070 --> 00:00:06,903 They are white hats, black hats, 5 00:00:06,903 --> 00:00:09,570 gray hats, blue hats, and elite. 6 00:00:10,718 --> 00:00:14,042 A White Hat hacker is someone who is non-malicious. 7 00:00:14,042 --> 00:00:16,474 This is somebody who is going to attempt to break into 8 00:00:16,474 --> 00:00:18,304 a company at their request. 9 00:00:18,304 --> 00:00:20,692 In fact, the white hats are either on the payroll of 10 00:00:20,692 --> 00:00:24,943 the company or they're contracted to do this as a service. 11 00:00:24,943 --> 00:00:26,191 We also refer to these as 12 00:00:26,191 --> 00:00:29,031 ethical hackers or penetration testers. 13 00:00:29,031 --> 00:00:31,991 They are highly professional and they use open source tools 14 00:00:31,991 --> 00:00:33,871 and their own tool kits to try and break 15 00:00:33,871 --> 00:00:36,812 into a company and test their defenses. 16 00:00:36,812 --> 00:00:39,306 Black hats on the other hand are malicious. 17 00:00:39,306 --> 00:00:41,269 These are the bad guys. 18 00:00:41,269 --> 00:00:43,741 These are malicious hackers who try to break into 19 00:00:43,741 --> 00:00:45,549 computer systems and networks without 20 00:00:45,549 --> 00:00:48,319 anybody's authorization or permission. 21 00:00:48,319 --> 00:00:50,877 This is the person that Hollywood likes to portray. 22 00:00:50,877 --> 00:00:52,754 They always portray them as somebody in a 23 00:00:52,754 --> 00:00:54,313 black hoodie in a darkly lit room 24 00:00:54,313 --> 00:00:56,786 hacking away at three in the morning. 25 00:00:56,786 --> 00:00:58,523 This may or may not be the case but 26 00:00:58,523 --> 00:01:00,554 the concept remains the same. 27 00:01:00,554 --> 00:01:03,415 These are the bad guys, these are the people 28 00:01:03,415 --> 00:01:04,719 trying to break into our networks and 29 00:01:04,719 --> 00:01:06,282 trying to steal our information. 30 00:01:06,282 --> 00:01:08,031 Or they're trying to get money out of us 31 00:01:08,031 --> 00:01:10,970 as a ransom to get our information back. 32 00:01:10,970 --> 00:01:13,226 Now between a white hat and black hat, 33 00:01:13,226 --> 00:01:15,519 we have something known as a gray hat. 34 00:01:15,519 --> 00:01:18,719 A gray hat is a hacker without any affiliation to a company. 35 00:01:18,719 --> 00:01:21,116 They attempt to break into a network and they risk 36 00:01:21,116 --> 00:01:23,250 breaking the law by doing it. 37 00:01:23,250 --> 00:01:25,941 Now the difference between a gray hat and a black hat 38 00:01:25,941 --> 00:01:28,352 is that a black hat has malicious intent. 39 00:01:28,352 --> 00:01:31,010 A gray hat doesn't necessarily have that. 40 00:01:31,010 --> 00:01:33,412 They may just want to be trying to hack into a company 41 00:01:33,412 --> 00:01:34,823 to see if they can do it. 42 00:01:34,823 --> 00:01:37,079 They don't want to cause any harm to the company, 43 00:01:37,079 --> 00:01:39,336 but instead a black hat, if he was doing it, 44 00:01:39,336 --> 00:01:41,348 would be trying to do it to steal their data, 45 00:01:41,348 --> 00:01:44,297 delete their data and hold it for ransom or other things. 46 00:01:44,297 --> 00:01:46,268 Now, when we look at gray hats, 47 00:01:46,268 --> 00:01:48,967 gray hats are still breaking the law because they are not 48 00:01:48,967 --> 00:01:50,465 the ones who are asked to come in 49 00:01:50,465 --> 00:01:52,228 and break into those networks and so 50 00:01:52,228 --> 00:01:54,399 they are on the bad side of things. 51 00:01:54,399 --> 00:01:56,929 But they're also a lot of times kind of a good guy, 52 00:01:56,929 --> 00:01:59,348 because a lot of times they'll break into a company 53 00:01:59,348 --> 00:02:02,188 and then turn around and say, "hey Facebook, I broke into 54 00:02:02,188 --> 00:02:04,628 your network and here is how I did it. 55 00:02:04,628 --> 00:02:06,809 Go patch that vulnerability." 56 00:02:06,809 --> 00:02:09,065 That's why they're kind of white and kind of black, 57 00:02:09,065 --> 00:02:11,193 they are in the middle, that's why they're gray. 58 00:02:11,193 --> 00:02:13,919 But again they are on the breaking the law side 59 00:02:13,919 --> 00:02:16,348 because nobody has asked them to come in. 60 00:02:16,348 --> 00:02:18,599 The fourth type of hacker we have is known 61 00:02:18,599 --> 00:02:19,998 as a blue hat hacker. 62 00:02:19,998 --> 00:02:22,479 A blue hat hacker is that person who is attempting 63 00:02:22,479 --> 00:02:25,479 to hack into a company's network with their permission 64 00:02:25,479 --> 00:02:28,214 but they're not employed by the company. 65 00:02:28,214 --> 00:02:30,529 So this might be somebody who is essentially a 66 00:02:30,529 --> 00:02:33,889 freelance ethical hacker or a freelance penetration tester. 67 00:02:33,889 --> 00:02:36,679 Where as a white hat was actually hired and paid for and 68 00:02:36,679 --> 00:02:39,276 contracted by the company, a blue hat 69 00:02:39,276 --> 00:02:41,089 on the other hand isn't. 70 00:02:41,089 --> 00:02:43,534 They may be doing this as part of something like a 71 00:02:43,534 --> 00:02:45,430 bug bounty program where they allow anybody 72 00:02:45,430 --> 00:02:46,721 to participate and find the 73 00:02:46,721 --> 00:02:48,538 vulnerabilities in their systems. 74 00:02:48,538 --> 00:02:50,732 In fact, a lot of companies now are registering 75 00:02:50,732 --> 00:02:53,220 with a company called Hacker One which is a central 76 00:02:53,220 --> 00:02:55,875 repository for bug bounty programs. 77 00:02:55,875 --> 00:02:57,961 Blue hat hackers can go to Hacker One and 78 00:02:57,961 --> 00:03:00,710 register themselves and then they select the companies 79 00:03:00,710 --> 00:03:02,490 that they want to target. 80 00:03:02,490 --> 00:03:04,852 By doing this, they now have permission to target 81 00:03:04,852 --> 00:03:08,092 those companies within a guided set of rules of engagement 82 00:03:08,092 --> 00:03:09,550 that Hacker One provides. 83 00:03:09,550 --> 00:03:12,132 And if they are able to find a vulnerability or a way in, 84 00:03:12,132 --> 00:03:14,612 they can report it back to the company and the company 85 00:03:14,612 --> 00:03:16,458 has agreed to pay them a bounty 86 00:03:16,458 --> 00:03:18,950 some amount of money based on what they found. 87 00:03:18,950 --> 00:03:21,611 This is basically allowing companies to get a large pool 88 00:03:21,611 --> 00:03:24,297 of ethical hackers constantly going after their websites 89 00:03:24,297 --> 00:03:27,012 for a very low cost. Instead of having to hire these 90 00:03:27,012 --> 00:03:28,601 people directly, they only have to 91 00:03:28,601 --> 00:03:30,599 pay them if they find an error. 92 00:03:30,599 --> 00:03:33,006 The final category is what we call Elite. 93 00:03:33,006 --> 00:03:36,332 Elite hackers are those who find and exploit vulnerabilities 94 00:03:36,332 --> 00:03:38,302 before anyone else does. 95 00:03:38,302 --> 00:03:41,081 These people are the ones who create their own tools. 96 00:03:41,081 --> 00:03:43,692 They do their own programming and they're the ones who are 97 00:03:43,692 --> 00:03:46,371 going to develop the tools that pretty much everyone else, 98 00:03:46,371 --> 00:03:49,406 white hats and black hats, are going to end up using. 99 00:03:49,406 --> 00:03:52,910 Now is an elite hacker a good guy or bad guy? 100 00:03:52,910 --> 00:03:55,652 Is he a white hat or a black hat? 101 00:03:55,652 --> 00:03:58,617 Well, they can be both depending on who they are. 102 00:03:58,617 --> 00:04:01,121 What has been found is that elite hackers represent 103 00:04:01,121 --> 00:04:03,307 a very small minority of hackers. 104 00:04:03,307 --> 00:04:07,332 One out of 10,000 are considered to be an elite hacker. 105 00:04:07,332 --> 00:04:10,001 And so these people, if they have evil intentions 106 00:04:10,001 --> 00:04:11,462 and they are malicious in nature 107 00:04:11,462 --> 00:04:14,030 we would categorize them as a black hat, elite hacker. 108 00:04:14,030 --> 00:04:16,452 But if they are a penetration tester and 109 00:04:16,452 --> 00:04:18,332 they are working on the side of good, 110 00:04:18,332 --> 00:04:21,245 they might be a white hat elite hacker. 111 00:04:21,245 --> 00:04:23,702 And so elite doesn't reference whether they are good 112 00:04:23,702 --> 00:04:26,201 or bad, instead it references the skill level 113 00:04:26,201 --> 00:04:27,550 of the attacker. 114 00:04:27,550 --> 00:04:30,175 Now, all the way on the other side 115 00:04:30,175 --> 00:04:32,212 we have what's called a Script kiddie. 116 00:04:32,212 --> 00:04:33,999 A Script kiddie is as far away as you can 117 00:04:33,999 --> 00:04:35,270 get from a lead. 118 00:04:35,270 --> 00:04:37,710 This is somebody who uses everybody else's tools 119 00:04:37,710 --> 00:04:40,422 and they might not even know what they are doing with them. 120 00:04:40,422 --> 00:04:42,201 They're just running programs to see if they 121 00:04:42,201 --> 00:04:43,641 can hack something. 122 00:04:43,641 --> 00:04:45,401 That's what a script kiddie does. 123 00:04:45,401 --> 00:04:47,302 Elite is all the way on the other side. 124 00:04:47,302 --> 00:04:49,950 These are the best of the best and highly professional. 125 00:04:49,950 --> 00:04:53,533 Script kiddies are the babies of the bunch.