Hackers

Hackers are individuals who deploy attacks on computer systems and exploit them for vulnerabilities. These individuals develop viruses and malware to aid them in their goals to break into these systems.

There are 3 types of hackers.
 * Black Hat Hackers
 * White Hat Hackers

Black Hat Hackers are hackers that aim to steal information from or cause harm to computer systems. This information may belong to an individual, a company, or an organization.
 * Grey Hat Hackers

White Hat Hackers or Penetration Testers are hackers that aim to to exploit a system for vulnerabilities and get rid of them. They are usually hired by companies to keep their data safe and secure.

Grey Hat Hackers are a mix breed of Black hat and White hat hackers. They are like mercenaries in the field of Cyber Security. They often poke around a system without permission looking for vulnerabilities and when they find them, they notify the owner and request payment in order to fix the vulnerability.

Some hackers from these 3 categories may also be Hacktivist.

Hacktivism is when hackers use their skills to launch politically or socially driven attacks on an entities computer systems. This is usually done to send a message or to meet demands. Hacktivist will usually display a political message on their target's website. Distributed denial-of-service attacks are also common attacks for hacktivist to launch. These attacks disrupt the traffic to the targeted website.

Social Engineering is the use of deception to manipulate individuals into divulging confidential or personal information that may be used for fraudulent purposes. - Google

Hackers tend to use social engineering to obtain certain information, plant hardware, or extract data from or on a target. A hacker could show up at a company's office disguised as an IT professional who was called in to fix a possibly non existent problem in the system. The secretary of that company may not think anything of it and allow the hacker access to the system. From here the hacker could plant a backdoor, steal the companies data, delete the company's data, the possibilities are endless. They could then escape without being caught.

Other social engineering attacks can include phone calls from attackers pretending to be someone or apart of something they are not. Phishing attacks are social engineering attacks that take the form of an email. False websites can lure people into giving important information such as credit card numbers to hackers who want to steal information.

Sources

RIT Introduction Course on Cybersecurity @edX.com -

☀https://courses.edx.org/courses/course-v1:RITx+CYBER501x+1T2017/courseware/7ee883d66d8c4dfca219f7ca00ad8c7f/aa6fc50853144605a15325357c06e415/

Hacktivism - http://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/definition/hacktivism

Definitions - Google.com