text: A recent research study looked into the psychological characteristics of individuals that participate in hacking in the workforce. The findings indicate that grey hat hackers typically go against authority, black hat hackers have a strong tendency toward thrill-seeking, and white hat hackers often exhibit narcissistic traits.
  History
  The phrase grey hat was first publicly used in the computer security context when DEF CON announced the first scheduled Black Hat Briefings in 1996, although it may have been used by smaller groups prior to this time.   Moreover, at this conference a presentation was given in which Mudge, a key member of the hacking group L0pht, discussed their intent as grey hat hackers to provide Microsoft with vulnerability discoveries in order to protect the vast number of users of its operating system. Finally, Mike Nash, Director of Microsoft's server group, stated that grey hat hackers are much like technical people in the independent software industry in that "they are valuable in giving us feedback to make our products better".
  The phrase grey hat was used by the hacker group L0pht in a 1999 interview with The New York Times to describe their hacking activities.
  The phrase was used to describe hackers who support the ethical reporting of vulnerabilities directly to the software vendor in contrast to the full disclosure practices that were prevalent in the white hat community that vulnerabilities not be disclosed outside of their group.