black hatnoun [ C ]
/ˈblæk ˌhæt//ˈblæk ˌhæt/someone in a particular situation who is acting for morally bad reasons, or something that shows who this person is:
The group is considered kind of a black hat in the consulting business.
In a dysfunctional organization, it is often impossible to tell who are wearing the black hats, and who are wearing the white hats.
a hacker (= a person who gets into computer systems without permission) who does this for criminal or bad reasons:
Black hats are highly motivated. There's a lot of money at stake.
Compare
white hat
More examples
- After Watergate, Republicans were seen as the black hats of the campaign business.
- "That's the problem with most cop shows," he explains. "It's the black hat, white hat thing."
- In the early days black hats were low-rent hackers, working from home.
- We want to bring the fringe elements of the hacking community on board, and steer them away from being "black hats" - the malicious hackers responsible for website defacement and security breaches.
Thesaurus: synonyms and related words
Morally wrong and evil
- abhorrent
- amoral
- anomie
- arch-villain
- be rotten to the core idiom
- canker
- darkly
- evildoer
- go to the bad idiom
- godless
- hanky-panky
- heinous
- immoral
- impure
- seamy
- seedy
- shocking
- shockingly
- sinful
- wickedness
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You can also find related words, phrases, and synonyms in the topics:
Miscellaneous criminals
Operating computers