Black, White, & Gray

Sephastus

Hacking, cracking, exploiting and other user end activities have come a long way since the first few programs were created. Wherever there is a chance of getting something beneficial (be it money, graphical changes, or advantages), there has been hacking. But... all users are not the same...

 

Black Hat - This is the one everyone thinks of when they think of a "hacker". The person with nefarious intentions, who cracks, hacks or exploits, in order to make in game, or real world profit. These are most closely related to underworld institutions in remote countries where they perform RMT in order to gain money. These are also those that use programs not intended by the game developers to gain advantages over normal players.

 

White Hat - These hackers have the best interest of the game, or development company in mind. They are sometimes even part of the game company itself. They look for any type of hackable, crackable, exploitable loopholes or actions in the programs or games, and let the company know so they can address these.

 

Grey Hats - To some, these are worse than the Black Hats, and to others, the best friends of the community. Its up to you to decide. Grey hats do not fall neatly into the black hat, or white hat community. Depending on who you speak to, they will try to push these to one or the other. These are people that through their own means, either intentionally, or unintentionally, find and PUBLISH hacks, cracks and exploits. They do so with several different excuses: knowledge is free, forcing the company to fix their flaws quicker, or just want to show off what they can do, or are able to do with their knowledge.

 

As an example, there is an ongoing Black Hat / Grey Hat list of problems with FFXIV:ARR where many players are being affected, either because they used Grey Hat programs to gain advantages, or because they gained coin from blackhats that were doing buyouts with artificially made. So, should non-exploiting/hacking players be held accountable because they got advantages due to the actions of other players that used Gray or Black Hat means to get things?

 

As it stands right now, since it is so hard for developers to keep track of what is legit, or non legit, they do a wide Ban Hammer, and then sort out the legit accounts on a per account basis... which could take days/weeks.

 

What is the community's take on this?

 

Edit: Good to know that a big issue like cheating in games, specially MMOs, is considered "Off Topic"... The off topic forum is essentially a graveyard for posts that relate to games. Meh... I am a burnt out gamer that will likely no longer follow any of the trending games anyways, so my stay at these forums are probably numbered as well.. To those that read even this little blurb: Thanks, may your gaming days prove pleasurable.