In my opinion, the best description of the differences between these three classes of hackers is the following:
White hat: They will only use their knowledge for defensive capabilities. Creating a new virus in a lab setting that is only used to improve mitigation techniques would still be defensive measure.
Gray hat: They will do offensive hacking, but only when they feel it is for a moral purpose. Breaking into a database or website to track down "bad" people is a great example of moral ambiguity that falls into the gray category.
Black hat: They will break things for fun and profit.
If you accept these definitions, the actions described in the article are definitely not white hat. As a matter of fact, if you actually RTFA the title is "Black ops: how HBGary wrote backdoors for the government" I did not see any mention of white hat in the article.
Aside from the poor choice of words in the
I thought the coolest insight was how Greg Hoglund does some of his research.
There is significant precedent in copyright law that lists of facts or data cannot be copyrighted.
See, e.g. Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Tel. Service Co., 499 U.S. 340 (1991) Link
That's great. Mr. Schoenfeld may eventually win. But I see the real problem here is a government funded entity "going after" the little guy for something absolutely absurd. MTA has unlimited funds. (thanks to the bottomless pockets of taxpayers) Mr. Schoenfeld may go bankrupt proving his innocence.
"This isn't brain surgery; it's just television." - David Letterman
