I agree, dubious use of the term white-hat. He hacked into their systems, stole ... | Hacker News

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unreal37 on Feb 17, 2012 | parent | context | favorite | on: "White hat" Facebook hacker gets 8 months in jail

I agree, dubious use of the term white-hat. He hacked into their systems, stole the code, and kept a copy on an external hard drive. Didn't do anything malicious, but didn't contact Facebook about it either. They discovered the intrusion by accident, and it took them months to track him down.

So "keeping the data to himself and doing nothing with it" is considered white hat?

ars on Feb 17, 2012 [–]

I think they are trying to distinguish it from those who actually cause harm.

I think he should be called gray hat. (Black: Harm. Gray: Does nothing. White: Helps company.)

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