Talk:black hat

black hat
RFC-sense:


 * # A [[malicious]] [[hacker]] &lt;!--see usage notes at "hacker" before you have a fit and change this--&gt; who commits [[illegal]] acts.

I had this edit window open for several days, trying to figure out how to rewrite this def, before eventually giving up and just adding the rest of the entry without touching this sense.

The problem is that black hats need not be malicious (at least as I use that word), nor hackers, nor need they commit illegal acts. For example, currently blackhat SEO is at RFD under the supposition that it's SOP, but linkspamming is not illegal, and AFAICT its practitioners are neither malicious (they're motivated by profit rather than by spite) nor "hackers" (in that they don't "hack into" the sites they spam).

I think the sense is closer to something like "A bad person", but obviously there's a lot more to it than that. . . anyone wanna jump in?

—Ruakh TALK 00:01, 10 August 2010 (UTC)


 * A member of a subgroup known among a larger group as that of wrongdoers?? &#x200b;—msh210℠ (talk) 19:51, 10 August 2010 (UTC)


 * One who carries out ethically dubious activities (hacking, spamming, etc.) for selfish or malicious purposes? Equinox ◑ 21:58, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

RFC discussion: January 2011
look RFC-sense for the "A malicious hacker who commits illegal acts" sense. See the entry's talk-page. Was previously tagged, everyone seemed to agree that the definition was problematic. . . and somehow it got de-tagged without any changes being made to the def. (It did get reshuffled etymologically, but actually that just added more problems, in that our entry now implies, on top of everything else, that malicious lawbreaking hackers are "villains" who have traditionally worn black Stetsons.) —Ruakh TALK 21:36, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

more general sense
i think there is a more general sense available here, as per the 1st sense at white hat, of a person who seeks to do harm in the real world (not just in a story), but not just limited to computer security. i think i remember reading about black hats in anarchist literature in high school, and they were presented without moral judgment ... that is, they were anarchists who sought to commit acts of violence against society, not infilitrators of the anarchist movement, and the reader was left to decide what to think of them. — Soap — 09:55, 16 December 2023 (UTC)