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black hat 1. [common among security specialists] A
cracker, someone bent on breaking into the system
you are protecting. Oppose the less comon white
hat for an ally or friendly security specialist; the term
gray hat is in occasional use for
people with cracker skills operating within the law, e.g. in doing security
evaluations. All three terms derive from the dress code of formulaic
Westerns, in which bad guys wore black hats and good guys white
ones. 2. [spamfighters] ‘Black hat’, ‘white hat’,
and ‘gray hat’ are also used to denote the spam-friendliness of
ISPs: a black hat ISP harbors spammers and doesn't terminate them; a white
hat ISP terminates upon the first LART; and gray hat ISPs terminate only
reluctantly and/or slowly. This has led to the concept of a hat check: someone considering a potential
business relationship with an ISP or other provider will post a query to a
NANA group, asking about the provider's hat
color. The term albedo has also been
used to describe a provider's spam-friendliness.
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