Unmasking The Shadows: Understanding Various Categories of Black Hat Hackers.

Hello my dear hackers, this is your friend Sagar. Welcome back to my new article with another hot topic, I hope you all are good, happy and secure at your home.

Today’s article we are gonna discuss about different types of black-hat hackers according to their task and their motive.

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✯ Introduction & Types of Hackers ✯

First of all we all need to know about hacker and types of hackers.

What is hacker ?
Hacker is a person or group of persons, who finds vulnerability into system, network, website or any other things which is directly connected to internet and they get the unauthorized access of them by exploiting the weaknesses of target system.

There are mainly there types of hacker White Hat Hacker, Gray Hat Hacker, Black Hat Hackers.
Let’s discuss it about one by one

1. White Hat Hackers :
   A hacker or group of hackers, who finds vulnerability into system, network or websites and exploit them and then report to the owner of the system. We also known them as a ethical hackers OR penetration tester OR security researcher. They perform their task with proper and legal permission.
2. Gray Hat Hackers :
   Gray hat hackers may have either good or bad intention of hacking. They exploit the system just for fun, prank intention or you can say, exploit the system to get the attation of owner. Somewhere they can considered as black hat hackers, because they exploit the system without having any permission.
3. Black Hat Hackers :
   Black hat hackers are also known as, crackers OR cyber criminals.
   The group of cyber threat actors who attack and exploit the system, network OR websites without having any type of owner permissions.
   They attack on system either for ransom or revenge.they don’t digest the food until they compromise someone’s system.

Now in this article, we are gonna see about only about types Black Hat Hackers in depth. So let’s begin !!!!

1) Hobbyist :

You can say hobbyist as a interrupter. hobbyist are intrupted the network just for fun, prank intension. They mostly categorized as grey hat, but they may also categorized as a black hat hackers. Interrupting someone system is a legal crime, dosen’t matter if you are doing it as a fun.

2) Hacktivist :

The word hacktivist came from two words Hacker + Activist = Hacktivist.
Their motive is to be a activist, get our rights from government to using the knowledge as a weapon.
Anonymous represents a real-life example of hacktivism. In 2010, Anonymous launched a series of cyber-attacks that targeted financial institutions and payment processors, including MasterCard, Visa, and PayPal, in response to their decision to suspend financial services to the whistleblower organization WikiLeaks.

3) Insider :

Some insiders may misuse their authorized access for illegal or unethical purposes, which would be considered a breach of trust and a violation of their role within the organization. While not always considered black hat hackers, employees or individuals with insider access can engage in malicious activities for personal gain or out of revenge. They may abuse their privileged access to steal data, disrupt operations, or engage in other harmful actions.

There are 3 types of Insiders as follows.

1. Professional insider : An insider of a company, as defined by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), is an officer, director, or 10% shareholder of a company that has inside information into the company because of their relationship to the company or with an officer, director, or principal shareholder of the company.
2. Malicious insider : A person who has insider knowledge of an organizations proprietary information and intentionally misuses it to negatively impact the integrity of the business.
3. Negligent insider : A negligent insider is an employee or individual who unintentionally compromises an organization’s security or confidentiality through careless actions or negligence.
   Example 1 : In 2013, Edward Snowden, a contractor at the National Security Agency (NSA), disclosed classified documents to the public, revealing extensive government surveillance programs. Snowden’s actions were considered negligent because he mishandled sensitive information, causing significant security breaches.
   Example 2 : Frances Haugen is a former Facebook data scientist turned whistleblower who gained widespread attention in 2021 for exposing internal documents that revealed Facebook’s knowledge of the harmful impact of its platform on society, including issues related to misinformation, polarization, and the mental health of users.

4) Organised Cyber Criminals :

Organised cyber criminals are the blackhat hackers groups also known as cyber terrorist. These cyber terrorist target the organizations for money and after getting money distribute it into their groups of every hacker. Sometimes they just attack for revenge. They engage in activities like identity theft, credit card fraud, ransomware attacks, and phishing schemes to make money illegally. Cybercriminals often operate in organized hacker groups.

Organized hackers have these types of peoples as follows.

1. Malware Developers : Malware developers develope their own malware to make crime and avoid antivirus detection easily. Mostly ransomware groups needs malware developer to develope the ransomware for cyber attack. ALPHV (BlackCat), Black Basta, Hive, LockBit, REvil are some most dengerous ransomeware groups
2. Phishers : As we all know, phishing is a most common social engineering attack nowdays. Phishers develope their own professional phishing page with proper setup.
3. Social Engineers : these are rely on psychological manipulation rather than technical exploits to gain access to systems or sensitive information. They may use tactics like pretexting, phishing, and baiting to trick individuals into divulging confidential information.
4. Threat Operators : These guys control networks of compromised computers (botnets) to carry out coordinated attacks, such as distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks or sending spam emails for financial gain. These cyber threat operators can vary in their motivations, skills, and the scale of their operations. They pose significant risks to individuals, organizations, and even governments, and cybersecurity professionals and law enforcement agencies work diligently to detect, prevent, and respond to their activities in order to protect digital assets and privacy.
5. Black Market Operators : These individuals run underground markets where stolen data, hacking tools, and other illegal goods or services are bought and sold.

5) State-Sponsored Hackers :

State-Sponsored hackers are the fully funded by government to work for government and nation. Their target is protect the nation digitally as well as target enemy countries by their cyber attack. These threat actors are primarily driven by political, military, or economic interests.

I written the article on state-sponsored hackers, here is the link.

Unmasking State-Sponsored Cyber Attacks: A Comprehensive Guide.

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