There are different types of hackers. I have put them in order based on my opinion:
1. Security Experts
2. Script Kiddies
3. Grown up script kiddies
4. Political Hackers
5. Corporate Spies
6. Frustrated Employees
Security Experts
Security Experts are those who know computers inside and out. Writing software, finding flaws, building computers, setting up critical networks and being able to disable them are some of the most important qualities possessed by security experts. These people can do a lot of damage but are aware of the illegalities of their potential actions. This is why their threat level is extremely low. Many large corporations hire these security experts to safeguard their infrastructure. Those who don't hire security experts, suffer loss of data, information theft, unexplained money transfers to unknown destinations and sometimes ultimate destruction of their corporation. Corporations who hire security experts, have extremely low threat level, if not perfect, because security experts are always looking for security vulnerabilities by actually attempting hacking attacks against corporation not to destroy it, but to fix it. These exercises are extremely important by the security point of view. The line is very thin and blurry which differentiate hackers and security expert. Some time it is hard to tell who is who.
Script Kiddies
Script Kiddies are those people who always trying to do anything illegal to take down the entire network. He does not have very good knowledge of programming or networking or both. Most of the time these are students of high schools or some colleges who often hangs out IRC channels or you can find them in the warez sites asking for crack of some program(s), they will be often talking about how to deface an web site, they will be acting total 1337 */sarcasm/* and at the same time trying to kiss some other so called 1337's ass. You would never hear anything useful coming out of their keyboard. They would download someone else's program to do their own bad work. They have no respect of unbalance economy and they won't do anything right to make this world little better.
Most of the time if they acquire any method to break into some web site they often leave traces to track them down and obviously they gets busted. One very interesting happens after they get busted, MEDIA, they brag and brag about this so called lamer or script kid that how he broke into such and such place and now he is in custody. The next thing they bring up which completely breaks my heart is they call him an hacker. AN HACKER.
What is wrong with you media guys out there. Please have some respect about a hacker. The person who is in custody is a super lame script kid. Please don't compare them to us.
Grownup Script Kid
They are the former script kiddies who are now writing cracks of software to use it for free and then they will distribute that crack in the cracking sites for others to use it. They are the software pirates, they most of the time hack to impress their peers. They normally don't hack into your home pc to crash it, but they go for bigger targets. Most of the time if they hack in to your home pc they won't crash it but they will use it for their own mean. Some Internet users keep a practice to download and try the shareware or freeware or crack. These free wares most of the time affected by Trojans which your antivirus won't pick up because they are designed in that way. Best defense against these kinds of threats are always download from reliable sources and before you execute that downloaded file scan it with anti Trojan software. Anti-virus is not only enough. Some time these grownup script kids write some excellent programs for hacking purpose. So they are not that bad.
Political Hackers
This is a new kind of specie emerging in these days. He/She will hack for political reasons. They will attempt DOS or DDOS attack against their rival political parties web sites or anyone who is against their interest. They will completely go for ultimate defacement including wiping out and trashing the entire database. Their targets are mostly newspaper, political parties web sites, government sites. One government can organize this kind of attack against another country's government and leave some messages against their policies and actions. Examples: India and Pakistan's ongoing cyber war. Israel and Palestine cyber war. Some of these hackers are highly qualified and some times they comes from the Security Expert category. They can gather a lot of information against another country's government which could be very helpful at the time of ground war.
Corporate Spies
They are very expensive to hire and very risky from the law point of view. Most often a big corporation will hire these kind of hacker to spy around on rival corporation. There are some well organized underground spies who will do this work for money or political reasons. But most often attacks are generated from one country to another. Employees get hire of the target corporations to make the job easier. Money is a big power isn't it?
Frustrated Employee
Frustrated employees are the most dangerous security problem of all kind for an corporation because you don't know who is the attacker inside of your own company. If he holds an technical position related to your networks, you better believe you are in big trouble and you cannot do much about it for now period. He/She will deploy all kind of gadgets to keep track of your company's movement, so just incase if he gets fired, he can anytime trash your company to dustbin. If he wants to take your servers down, no matter how much security you apply, it will go down. It is very hard to detect but not impossible. Strict security audit will reduce this kind of threat and will lead you to the frustrated one.
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