Why I Don't Like Trend Micro's Training Courses

[SoBeTRoLL]

Throughout each and every course that they have regarding threats, malware, spyware, and things they constantly refer to the offending person as a "hacker". I take offense to that, not everyone who do these things are hackers. There are all sorts of different hackers out there, and using "hacker" as a generic term for someone who invades, destroys, or otherwise messes up computer systems feels offensive. Until we get the language of the way we talk about black hats as something other than just "hacker", white hat hackers and grey hat's are going to be lumped in with a group they don't want to be associated with. Penetration testers and penetrators are completely different people with completely different motivations, yet trend micro would have you believe that at the end of the day, they are all the same, they are "hackers" and must be caught and punished. Nothing could be further from the truth. In much the way politics works, until you control the language of the conversation, you can't win. Once your able to control the language used in an argument, you've won.

[d31373]

The problem with most companies and their viewpoint of "Hackers" is that they are all criminals. Unfortunately we've all used terms that just just aid to obfuscate the real problem. We are not a very unified community. We use terms like "Whitehat", "Blackhat", "Greyhat", "Purple team", "Blue team", "Red team", "Hacker", "Cracker", "Hactivist", "Cyberterrorists", etc. What people need to understand is that we are all hackers in our own way. Lumping people together just puts the bad with the good. Hackers are Hackers, Hackers can be Criminals, Criminals are Criminals, Criminals can be hackers, but not all Hackers are criminals.