Grey Hat Hacker Law and Legal Definition
A Grey Hat in the computer security community refers to a skilled hacker who sometimes acts for offensive purpose, sometimes in good will, and sometimes for defensive purpose. Grey Hat Hacker is a combination of a white hat and black hat hackers. Grey Hat Hacker usually does not hack for personal gain nor has malicious intentions. However, Grey Hat Hacker may occasionally commit crimes during the course of his/her technological exploits. A grey hat will not necessarily notify the system admin of a penetrated system of penetration. Such a hacker prefers anonymity at almost all cost, carrying out their penetration undetected and then exiting said system still undetected with minimal damages. Consequently, grey hat penetrations of systems tend to be for far more passive activities such as testing, monitoring, or less destructive forms of data transfer and retrieval.
