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CompTIA Security+ 2.1 CompTIA Security+ 5.5 EC-Council CEH 1.1
TechKnowSurge Catalog Interactives White, Gray or Black Hat?
InteractiveSecurityFree

White, Gray or Black Hat?

Permission and intent decide the hat. Sort hackers into white, gray and black.

⚑ Complete this interactive to capture a CTF flag worth 5 points.

About this interactive

What you are doing: deciding which hat each hacker wears. The lesson's matrix has two questions. Was it legal, with the permission of whoever owns the system? And was the intent good or bad? A white hat has permission: a hired penetration tester, someone testing their own equipment, a researcher working within a bug bounty program's rules. That is ethical hacking. A black hat has no permission and means harm or personal gain. A gray hat also has no permission, so it is still illegal, but means well: they find a weakness, tell the owner how to fix it, and take nothing for it. How to use it: first ask whether the owner said yes. If so, it is white. If not, ask what the hacker did with what they found.

What you'll learn

Aligned to

CompTIA Security+
2.1 Compare and contrast common threat actors and motivations.
5.5 Explain types and purposes of audits and assessments.
EC-Council CEH
1.1 Introduction to Ethical Hacking

Key terms

White Hat Hacker
A hacker who is legally authorized to test and assess the security of a system, operating within ethical and legal boundaries.
Gray Hat Hacker
A hacker who operates without authorization and outside legal bounds but acts with good intent, typically disclosing discovered vulnerabilities to the affected organization.
Black Hat Hacker
A hacker who illegally attempts to gain unauthorized access to systems for malicious or personal gain.
Ethical Hacking
The practice of legally and intentionally probing systems for vulnerabilities with the owner's permission and without personal gain, following defined moral principles.
Penetration Testing
An authorized simulated attack on a system to identify and evaluate security vulnerabilities.

Topics

White Hat Hacker Gray Hat Hacker Black Hat Hacker Ethical Hacking Interactive Categorize

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