Blackhat

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A term used to describe individuals who hack systems with wrongful motives for personal advantage or to inflict damage
2. A label for those who illegally infiltrate computer systems for unethical reasons, aiming to cause harm or achieve personal gain
3. Someone who illegally accesses computer systems intending to harm or steal information

Etymology: The "black hat" in computing is a borrowing from Western films, where villains wore black stetsons so audiences could tell them apart from the heroes in white or lighter hats. Early Western movies and novels used this visual shorthand so consistently that "black hat" came to stand for any wrongdoer, and computer security borrowed the image when it needed a way to separate attackers from defenders. The phrase took on its hacking sense in the same spirit, the hat doing the moral labelling that a costume designer once did on set. The term has a second, independent source. Among Haredi communities, black hats are traditionally worn by men, and the phrase was also used in a more neutral way that let outsiders and insiders alike describe a person by dress. Whichever route the phrase took, the compound remains a plain English description of appearance turned into a label for character, and the spelling "blackhat" is simply the closed-up form of that two-word phrase.