Black hat

A black-hat hacker is a hacker who "violates computer security for little reason beyond maliciousness or for personal gain."^[1]

The term was coined by Richard Stallman, to contrast the maliciousness of a criminal hacker versus the spirit of playfulness and exploration of hacker culture, or the ethos of the white-hat hacker who performs hackerly duties to identify places to repair.^[2] The black-hat and white-hat terminology originates in Western films, where heroic and antagonistic cowboys might traditionally wear a white and a black hat respectively.^[3]

Black-hat hackers form the stereotypical, illegal hacking groups often portrayed in popular culture, and are "the epitome of all that the public fears in a computer criminal".^[4]Black-hat hackers break into secure networks to destroy, modify, or steal data; or to make the network unusable for those who are authorized to use the network.