Grey hats is an attitude of a hacker that is the hybrid of both white hats and black hats. These are the highly proficient and technology smart hackers that may use their soft wares manipulations skills for either good or bad works. Their skills may fall between the white or black hats on a range of spectrum. They may act either good or bad depending upon the situation. They may or may not intend to commit the cyber crimes. So it can never be certain that whether they are indulging into the security enhancing or network information destruction.
Reason to be Grey Hats
There calling themselves grey could be to not categorize themselves as either constructive or destructively malicious. They can adopt the diplomacy of getting an unauthorized access to a highly secure network and exposing a weakness to the concerning authorities that provided them access to the network at the same time. They may also hold the information from the administrators that they exploited this weak point any may sell this information to either them or their enemies. They may not be willing to disclose their skills for legal consequences. They also have a motive like the black hats for the hacking of information. They choose to leave their motive ambiguous for either of the parties.
Consequences of grey hat hacking
They grey hats unlike the black hats are the passive attackers and prefer to remain undetectable. It’s also never heard that they compromised the whole system. They may live or die to keep their anonymity. They may or may not notify a webmaster of a vulnerability which keeps them distinguished from the black hackers. They are not completely evil hackers but may choose to be one in time.