There is no such thing as a red hat hacker. Red Hat is a company owned by IBM that develops open-source software and is known for Red Hat Enterprise Linux. [The definition of a black hat hacker is available here.]( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_hat_(computer_security) ) [The definition of a white hat hacker is available here.]( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_hat_(computer_security) ) More on reddit.com

Hackers can't even get good support! The hackers stated that they attempted to contact Red Hat with an extortion demand but received no response other than a templated reply instructing them to submit a vulnerability report to their security team. More on reddit.com

I don't really buy the hats descriptions tbh. It's kinda just marketing bullshit so normies can understand that hacking in and of itself isn't illegal. The truth is that a hacker is a hacker and a cyber criminal is a cyber criminal, you can hack and not break the law just like you can be a cyber criminal and not be a hacker. Where it really gets messy is ethics. What's legal is not always ethical, and visa versa, and what's ethical isn't necessarily the same thing for every person. That being said, a penetration tester and a cyber criminal hacker will have similar skills. They both will need to know how to evade antivirus, especially in the case of a red team which is more hardcore adversary simulation. They'll both need to know how to find and exploit flaws in a system, including human flaws. The only real difference in skills, imo, is that a penetration tester needs to be good at writing up a clear report that execs can understand, but also technical enough for it and the soc to fix the problems. My advice figure out what you consider ethical and stick to it, I'd personally not recommend breaking the law in most scenarios, but that's a decision only you can make for yourself when you get there. More on reddit.com