Gray Hat, White Hat Hackers And The Criminal Justice System

Introduction

Within the 20th and 21st century, millions of people have become victims to countless acts of cyber-criminality. We’ve come to know and label such people engaged in cyber-attacks as Hackers. More specifically, there are three categories of hackers: Black Hat, Gray Hat, and White Hat. For clarification from Larisa April Long(2012), White Hat hackers are the ethical hackers, who have authorization to seek out the same vulnerabilities that Black Hats look for and either simply inform the owner of the system’s flaw or design the security to protect the system. Gray Hat hackers will not exploit vulnerabilities found in a system like Black Hats do, however, they also do not have authorization to access systems like White Hats do. As for Black Hat hackers, they illegally gain access to systems and exploit vulnerabilities to fulfil their own malicious intents (Long, 2012, pg. 5). A primary reason that Black Hat Hackers are an important issue to the criminal justice system is because there aren’t enough task forces who can engage in effectively combating this crime. An understanding of the psychological profile of Black Hat hackers will indicate how it is difficult for the criminal justice system to go after such complex persons due to their diverse motivations to criminality and their capability to blend into society.

The major contexts and circumstances to keep in mind would be the individual hackers personality, motivations, and awareness of their ability to blend into