A cyber criminal profile is essential in order to learn how attackers think, what motivates them, and how they work. Hackers or cybercriminals are intelligent, highly skilled, and usually very resourceful, making it difficult but not impossible to catch or anticipate them. Understanding the enemy is the first tool used when fighting against them and cyber deception plays an important role. Based on Rashmi Saroha´s report Profiling a Cyber Criminal1 the characteristics of the cybercriminals can be divided into 4 groups; technical know-how, personal traits, social characteristics, and motivating factors. For this report, Saroha asked 20 Psychology and Sociology students to describe the personality and characteristics of cybercriminals. The resulting words that describe these types of criminals are sharp, well-trained, strategic planners, resourceful, passionate, determined, marginalized, seeking monetary gain, greedy, strong political beliefs, intolerant, and control-freak, among others. It is now beyond doubt that the hacker community has developed efficient techniques for analyzing, reverse engineering, testing, and modifying software and hardware that challenge their college and graduate-school-educated peers. These techniques have let the community substantially contribute to the state of the art of practical computer security.

The term "white hat" is usually applied to those who ethically oppose malicious abuse of computer systems. "Gray hats" might run afoul of some computer-related laws, but they're motivated to warn vulnerable parties and minimize damage (for more information, see the " "A Gray Area" sidebar). "Black hats," who acts for personal gain and without regard for possible damage, typically oppose knowledge transfer and disapprove of public disclosure because it detracts from their own efficiency.

For example, DefCon, the largest US hacker convention, attracted an estimated 7,000 attendees this year, from high school students to professional security administrators and developers.