Talk:White hat (computer security)

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 7 July 2020 and 14 August 2020. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Yixin97.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 12:55, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Other uses

Mentioning de Bono's white hat under Whitehat may be inappropriate, but there's a redirect at white hat. Perhaps there should be a disambiguation there and similar arrangements made for black hat. I couldn't say.

Move

For symmetry with Black hat and Gray hat, and because "white hat" is the usual noun. One says "a white-hat hacker," or "a white hat"; never "a whitehat." See "What links here" and note how many [[Whitehat|white hat]] links there are. --Quuxplusone 19:38, 30 May 2005 (UTC)

• I vote move. --Quuxplusone 19:38, 30 May 2005 (UTC)
• Move it. --TenOfAllTrades (talk/contrib) 21:05, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)

This article has been renamed as the result of a move request. violet/riga (t) 23:27, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)

• Ask and ye shall recieve. talk

Mizapur Devilbhai (talk) 16:19, 30 April 2021 (UTC)

Criticism

This article is in need of a criticism section. Specifically adressing the issue that there is no such thing as black or white hat hackers, but that the 'black hat' was invented by hackers who were afraid of getting negative publicity, labelling anyone of their kind who got caught with criminal behavior a 'black hat' so as not to get blamed themselves. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by IP address 82.92.64.247 (talk • contribs) 14:18, 24 November 2006 (UTC).

I agree, this place needs a criticism section. There are many views on the phenomenon 'white hat hacker', but the article only represents one. I'll add one later tonight. 82.95.254.30 17:53, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

What kind of white hat uses low orbit ion canon? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.29.151.162 (talk) 22:51, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

"sofixit"

• Your argument has multiple logical fallacies.
• There are multiple meanings to hacker — the hacker definition controversy covers this somewhat, as does the main entry. You appear to use more than one, leading to a fallacy of equivocation.
• The "cracker" and "black hat" terminology that is used to refer to computer intruders (and specifically those with amoral or malicious intent) — that is, the criminal variety of security hackers — did indeed arise from the long-standing informal community of computer amateurs and professionals — that is, hackers in the broadest sense of the word — objecting to the media making use of the term only for the former group, when the latter group had used a broader meaning. (The label is applied not only to those caught, but also with those uncaught.) However, it is not so much that the wider community of hackers objected to "negative publicity", but objected because of offense at the category error implied from the usage — which you also suffer from.
• This in term suggests your argument suffers from non causa pro causa.
• Even if your assertion of this motive was accurate, it is an example of an appeal to motive fallacy; IE, merely because ulterior motive can be shown, it does not therefore follow that the distinction that has been made lacks validity.

 

Your remarks convey an unappealing appearance of ignorance. Such ignorance can be and ought to be corrected. Please do so. Abb3w 17:10, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Don't be a dick and answer like a normal person. 82.95.254.30 17:53, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

• I would reword some of the introductory sentences from "... , there is a third kind known as a grey hat hacker who hacks with good intentions but at times without permission" to a new sentence.

Remove term hacker

The Black hat article introduction follows the common convention in the IT/programming world of using the term "cracker". I think that in this context, the term "hacker" should be removed from the introduction. Not only does it not follow industry convention, but I find it confusing, as I usually expect the term "hacker" to be synonymous with "programmer" or "coder", and "white hat" does not fit into this context.Jantman 02:47, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

• Please give an example or DIY.BlackbeardSCBC 0001, 1 December 2007 (GMT-8)

Examples

Wouldn't a penetration test be a better example of White Hat work? The current example is something of a grey area (and so, probably Grey Hat). --Tango 21:48, 2 September 2007 (UTC) Fixed. See definition link.BlackbeardSCBC 0001, 1 December 2007 (GMT-8) Hackers at Microsoft! are white hat hackers: they are gods that does nothing;-) for a big amount of money;-) and without any visible results! Thats the point! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 141.227.1.1 (talk) 08:41, 5 September 2007 (UTC) You are wrong and you know it Mr. Unsigned. The point of white hat hacking is to legally do what most ethical hackers do illegally.BlackbeardSCBC 0001, 1 December 2007 (GMT-8)

List of people

I took out the list of security experts. The list seemed to be an indiscriminate list of white-hats, security experts, and people who could be regarded as black-hats. --h2g2bob (talk) 22:06, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

Events?

I think it would be a good idea to have a section about White Hat confrences.Sephiroth storm (talk) 15:53, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

Why here, and not in Hacker (computer security), where the majority of the content is? White Hat is a term that's used for multiple things, and I'm really not sure it should exist as a separate article rather than a disambiguation page, even if the "computer security good guy" is the most dominant current usage. Jclemens (talk) 17:06, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

Ethical Hacker in lead

The lead links the words 'ethical hacker' to Hacker Ethic, however if you try to search for 'Ethical Hacking' you get redirected to 'White hat'

Can someone please clean up these links or merge the articles, they are quite confusing. I would do i myself but i dont know how. Bodsda (talk) 13:56, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Done. Sephiroth storm (talk) 21:51, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Break up

The accompanying article White hat has 4 major sections, each on a different (tho etymologically related) topic. An article needs a single unifying topic, not just a name shared by its topics. This title is lk'd primarily from comp-security articles, so that is probably the primary topic; i am breaking out the others to White hat (film), White hat (search), and Scottish Rite#33rd degree.
--Jerzy•t 05:39, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

• I think the film article should be merged back... it is really the same usage as in this article. Blueboar (talk) 12:11, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

• The accompanying article is not abt terminology, but abt the phenom that is called being a white-hat hacker. Many would-be usage articles violate NOTADICT; if you think that is true of White hat (film), nominate it for AfD, but it can't be merged into the accompanying article.
  --Jerzy•t 19:53, 15 April 2010 (UTC)
  

OurMine

Because someone added the OurMine group and I just reverted that change, I thought I'd provide a bit more detail as to why. The OurMine article on wikipedia doesn't mention their white hat nature (unlike the other example, MalwareMustDie), and the activities described on the page are not exactly white hat as described in this article. I also did some searching; it looks like apart from the group itself, news articles describe them quite differently, e.g., this article. Similarly, this article writes that they claim not work for financial gain, but this is not the definition of white hat laid down in this Wikipedia article. I think this is enough reasons not to have this group as an example, if only because examples should be those groups that actually exemplify the behavior described as white hat here, but I'd be happy to be convinced that I'm wrong. Namnatulco (talk) 07:55, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

The lead sentence.

@Nithin: I clearly explained my edit: "Not only "refers to" but even "mean". So, let's be precise. Of course, there are words that only "refer to something", but don't mean what they refer to, e.g.: The word "tasty" refers to food but is not food."

And then you reverted it with the following edit summary: "I disagree, white hat doesn't exactly mean ethical hacker/pentester, it refers to them. Its not exactly 1:1 i mean white hat is slang and also its generally used as an adjective vs a noun"

Of course, you have every right to disagree, but... Do you have any source to support your claim? According to the highly respective dictionary the term "white hat" is a noun and just means "A person who hacks into a computer network in order to test or evaluate its security systems." Just because "white hat" is slang does not change anything. This term can also mean (not "refer to") a piece of clothing, but not in the context of our article. So please, restore my version. I will really appreciate it. 85.193.228.103 (talk) 22:17, 25 December 2020 (UTC)

I agree with and support the IP. WP:REFERS applies here. Elizium23 (talk) 22:36, 25 December 2020 (UTC)

@Elizium23: I agree that "Refers to" is bad and shouldn't be used, but i disagree that it should be replaced by "means" which isn't much better. Per Wikipedia:ISATERMFOR I think that perhaps the title should be changed, perhaps to "White hat hacker" we could also drop "(computer security)" and then the lead could read "A White hat hackers is an ethical computer hacker, or a computer security expert, wh..." which i think is better in terms of WP:UMD and WP:ISATERMFOR Nithin^talk 20:02, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

Hmm... Nevermind that doesnt really make sense, i think "A "White hat" is an ..." is better and we should include "white hat hacker" as an alternate title but i dont really understand MOS:LEADALT or WP:OTHERNAMES Nithin^talk 20:15, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

I'm going to take it strait from Black hat (computer security) "A black hat hacker (or black-hat hacker) is a ..." which is exactly what i was thinking Nithin^talk 20:17, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

@Nithin: Good job. Thank you. 85.193.228.103 (talk) 00:01, 1 January 2021 (UTC)