An article by Rob Lemos at news.com discusses the differences between “white hat,” “gray hat,” and “black hat” hackers. The article lists me as a gray hat.
In my book, there is no such thing as a gray hat. If you break into a computer system without the owner’s permission, or if you infringe a copyright, then your hat is black. Otherwise your hat is white.
This article, like so many others, tries to pin the “gray hat” image on anyone whose actions make a technology vendor unhappy. That’s why the article classifies me as a gray hat – because my research made the RIAA unhappy.
As a researcher, my job is not to make vendors happy. My job is to discover the truth and report it. If the truth makes a vendor look good, that’s great. If the truth makes a vendor look bad, so be it.
