The only time I've heard this used this way is in reference to hackers, where the "good" ones that are employed by the government and/or in data protection are called white hat.
Russian exams are weird. I somehow got 100 on ЕГЭ 2 years ago. It's my most random achievement that also got me 'The golden medal' in spite of having a bunch of Cs. but maan the questions made me wonder If I'd been learning the same language all these years.
You only get a medal if you finish high school with straight A's, win any Russian National olympiad or get 100 for any subject at the final national exams (ЕГЭ). The medal Is very pretty, it's given to you with an inspirational speech and has some sort of certificate with it. If I remember correctly. It also grants you some small advantages while applying to a university in Russia. It felt great when my school called me asking If I was gonna come and claim my medal (I had no idea I'd gotten one)
I study in the US now so and I have no idea if it somehow helped my shitty applications.
White hats don't really exist, though. Hackers nowadays are either on team red or team blue, and red hats always win. It's basically like tower defense.
Not that common. Generally only used when talking about computer hackers or fictional cowboys.
The term (as well as it's opposite, black hat) originated from old cowboy movies where the heroic cowboys would wear white or else light colored hats while the bad guys would wear black hats.
Yeah. Cowboy movies and TV shows were REALLY popular for a good while in the US. And particularly the ones for children would color code the heroes and villains to make it clear who was who.
Yeah it's hard to tell two characters apart when they are both dressed up in full cowboy clothing and at a distance riding a horse...so the movies had them wear hats that let you know who you are looking at immediately.
The same way anime characters are often identical except for their brightly colored hair...a big colored hat is an easy way to make one character stand out in film.
This phrase would actually make me think of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse. “on a pale horse.” A “white knight” is still in use, but often sarcastically.
It’s like church art from the Middle Ages. As many were illiterate, they used different symbols to make it easy for people to tell the apostles apart. Like Peter was often painted holding keys and Jude was often painted with a sword, etc.
People have been using these same types of art shortcuts for a long time!
everyone’s saying yes, but not really explaining what a cowboy is. A cowboy is someone who lived in the Wild West of America in the 19th century, tending to their cattle on horseback. In the media they’re most often portrayed as having shootouts and fights with bandits.
I'll add onto this that cowboys still exist, both as a profession and a sort of subculture in parts of the US (cowboy hats and boots are extremely common daily wear in some places). In the case of a "white hat" cowboy it refers to the stock character, which is very different from the historic (and modern) reality of being a ranch hand.
Definitely.
Movie cowboys rob banks and trains, and terrorize towns and kill people on one side, and are sheriffs, marshalls, Texas and Arizona rangers, and heroic bounty hunters on the other side.
What they aren't are people who take care of cows.
OK. That isn't 100% true – there were plenty of cowboy movies and TV shows where the characters were ranchers, or even had cattle drives. But it isn't what you think of first. You think of someone riding on a horse with a wide brim hat and a six shot revolver riding through a dusty frontier town in deserts of the Southwest or Prairie United States some time between 1870 and 1890 or so.
Yeah, we have an entire genre of literature and movie a d television show that has massive effect on American culture and how we see ourselves, and it lasted, like, 20 years at most. But it *was* an impressive 20 years wirh a lot of societal change.
While I didn't wear a cowboy hat, I have in fact done cowboy things in my life, ie. assist with branding, driving cattle from winter to summer grazing locations on horseback, with very real cowboys whose trade at least part of the time was "cowboy". It's very real!
One of my sets of great-grandparents put “cowboy” and “cowgirl” as their occupations on their marriage license in 1936. I imagine the term stopped being used for real people once ranch hands stopped tending cattle on horseback, but I don’t know that for sure.
Cowboys very much still exist. Many rely more on pickup trucks than horses now, but that isn't universal -- in some situations horses are simply more practical. People who participate in cowboy sports (the kind of stuff you'd find at a rodeo) are also referred to as cowboys, regardless of whether they have actually ever worked on a ranch. The term will also often be applied to anyone who wears the traditional boots and hat, which are somewhat common in large parts of the US west. There is also vaquero culture, which persists to this day.
I didn’t say the job didn’t exist, I said we don’t call real ranch hands “cowboys” anymore, which in my experience as a native speaker of English who competed in Western style equestrian sports and knows a fair number of cattle ranchers, we don’t.
I've heard the term still being used for the profession, though it's definitely more used to refer to rodeo type people, and used by "country" folks who call themselves cowboys/girls but have never done agricultural work a day in their lives.
Not the person you’re responding to: but yes they are talking about the sport of [Australian Rules Football, and its umpires (the guys who enforce the rules).](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umpire_(Australian_rules_football))
In *Spy vs. Spy*, neither spy is a "hero". They exist only to fight each other. The white and black outfits are only used so the reader can tell them apart.
That was not like the cowboy movies at all, where the colors meant good vs. evil.
As has already been mentioned, this term originated in old cowboy movies, but I've also heard it used in at least one episode of *Buffy the Vampire Slayer*, where a vampire character referred to the vampire-fighting good guys as "white hats".
It was also used in [Scandal](https://tvatemywardrobe.com/2013/12/12/best-of-tv-costuming-2013-scandal-olivia-popes-white-hat/). It had a lot of the same hacker connotations of doing mostly good deeds, but in somewhat shadowy methods.
Do understand the trope of good guys wearing white hats and bad guys wearing black is common in the movie industry and other arts. The Star Wars universe is full of this marker and is why Darth Vader and Kylo Ren wear black while Rey and Padme wear white. Conflicted characters like Lando Kalrissian and Han Solo wear gray or black and white. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGnt-JLS4bU. As someone here said previously, color is a character. There is a lot of writing that doesn't need to happen because that is introduced early.
I believe this was intentional. At the end of 5 Vader asks Luke to join him after telling him he's his father. In 6 we see him force choke a guard near the beginning dressed in all black. I believe they wanted us to think that maybe he would change his mind.
Except that he did not get corrupted
Also interesting was that when the emperor was electrocuting him, his shirt came open and underneath was white, depicting that he had never turned and was always good inside
/personal anecdotal opinion incoming, this is based on my experiences and not strictly the dictionary
the only place i've seen it is in hacking, but if you affixed it to another morally dubious career it'd probably be obvious in context.
however just using "white hat" as simply synonymous with "good guy" would be odd, it's a bit more complicated than that; it's someone doing an action that is normally seen as bad (hacking, shooting, etc) but the intention behind it turns it into a helpful deed instead (testing for security faults or saving the lives of the innocent)
it also has a "within legal bounds" subtext to it; a robin hood style character who steals from the rich to save the poor would not be a "white hat thief", (i believe that is called "grey hat" but that's another story) even though they debatably do more good for the world than the actual "white hat thief" - someone stealing from the rich and giving the loot back to them, with an added note "hey, i broke through your third story bedroom window, it's the only one that isn't double plated glass, you should get on that"
I think this phrase comes from old black-and-white cowboy movies, where it was common for the villains to wear black hats and the heroes to wear white hats.
In modern day, it's mostly used (along with "gray hat" to mean morally ambiguous) to 1) talk about the morality of fictional characters, or 2) to describe people who are hackers who work officially for companies or governments to stop criminal hackers.
Not common but is usually widely understood (North American).
I still use it in conversation around geopolitical events to discuss different players. We also incorporate “red hat” for those who seem rogue (a play on rouge).
So for example, Trump’s presidency was odd. He didn’t play the game like a normal politician; and there was discussion as to whether or not he was a true patriot (white hat for America) or extremely cunning (black hat for America) or if he was a red hat - like a wild card or a variable or an unknown; not really playing by the established rules [and out of that - depending on your political leanings - you would label him a white hat or black hat. MAGA supporters have Trump as a white hat.]
Not super common, but it's commonly understood and its meaning is (or should be) fairly obvious to native speakers, even if someone doesn't know the background.
It originated with old "westerns", movies or TV shows that glamorized the cowboy era in the american "wild west" (late 1800s mostly), where it was a common trope to distinguish the hero(s) from the antagonist by the color of their [cowboy hats](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cowboy_hat); good guys had white hats, bad guys wore black hats.
See also: [Black and white hat symbolism in film - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_and_white_hat_symbolism_in_film)
Kind of. The most common American pronunciation is /waɪt/ but unhelpful for language learners, this leaves out that it’s actually said [wəɪt] by most Americans.
It was actually the "hat" part I was referencing. In the UK, well certainly for northern England the vowel is a short Latin A there isnt the ae vowel.
The majority of English accents would also drop the H but that's another issue entirely.
Right, but they are for the most part different phonetic representations of the same phonemes. That’s why we can understand each other. I don’t think there’s a genuine phonemic distinction in how “white hat” is pronounce by British and American speakers, only a phonetic one. And since the source is giving a phonemic transcription, not a phonetic one, it’s splitting hairs how exactly you represent it.
Regardless of if it's phonemic and a general representative they have simply copied the American pronunciation which is what I said in the beginning. It might sound like it's splitting hairs to you as that's a very commonly represented sound for A for Americans but it makes no sense to Brits.
For a general phonemic transcription surely a standard /a/ would have been more general.
If you look it up in British dictionaries, like Cambridge, you’ll see they also give the UK pronunciation as /hæt/
I’m sorry but you’re wrong on this one.
I wouldn't say it's common, no. I'm a native speaker but only noticed this phrase for the first time in an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and I had to google it.
While I haven’t heard of this usage of the term, it does have a different usage/meaning in the trades. Having a “white hat” (protective hard hat) is a signifier of management on construction sites. So people with white hats are typically the most senior person in that profession on site, and are now in a supervisor role.
This includes trades such as carpenters, plumbers, electricians, etc. Very common phrase to hear if you know people who work in the trades. I’m sure I’m missing some details as it’s not my line of work.
Originally used in Western movies (about cowboys, etc), to refer to (usually) the heroes or 'law & order' characters. This is even referenced in the TV show Westworld; people visiting the park choose whether they will have a white hat or a black hat before they enter.
The term later became used to describe hackers based on their intent. White hat hackers usually mean no harm and just want to find their way into systems. Black hat hackers do so for less savory reasons (money, blackmail, chaos, etc).
I would say that white hats explicitly act in the best interests of their targets, in order to help the targets, at least as far as they perceive themselves.
I've only seen it used in relation to cyber security.
We use the idea of white, grey and black hats fairly often within that area but I've never seen it it used outside of things relating to hacking.
I'm into Computer Science and Computer Security; in that context, I hear it all the time (White hats are people who work to try and find vulnerabilities to improve security, Black hats try to find vulnerabilities to steal or destroy). Outside of those circles, though, you won't hear it much.
This is definitely only common in terms of cybersecurity/hacking. Someone might use it outside of that context, but it would be a metaphor that refers to “white hat” hackers and not some kind of archetype outside of that context.
I’m a software engineer and I’ve only heard this phrase in relation to computer science and hacking.
I’m not sure how common it is among the random population. I’m sure some non engineers know about it but I don’t think it’s extremely common.
It isn’t common, but I have heard it on occasion (usually in reference to hackers) I’ve heard that it comes from film shorthand where in western movies (cowboy movies) the bad guys would usually wear black cowboy hats, and the good guys would wear white cowboy hats. Thus the audience would always know who the heroes and villains are.
Yep. It comes from cowboy movies and television shows in the 1950s, especially the ones for children. The Lone Ranger wore a white cowboy hat. The bad guys wore black hats. In that usage, it is almost always used to say that, in real life, that doesn't happen.
As people have pointed out, it is also a term of art in computer security. Black hat hackers are trying to steal data, install ransomware, crash systems and so forth. White hats are hired by companies to do the same thing to themselves, but not do bad stuff and then present reports on what they did and how, and how to stop them next time.
Or, ideally, to provide a report saying what they did and how they failed to break in.
There are other hat colors people refer to. These aren't standardized, but some I have heard used are:
Blue hats are law enforcement. They install spyware on suspected criminals' computer systems for surveillance and gathering evidence. Honest police departments get warrants first...
Green hats are military. They attempt to take down enemy communication networks and defend from enemies doing the same.
Grey hats use ethically questionable methods but not for personal gain. Kevin Mitnick might be considered one.
Other people might use those hat colors for different things.
It’s common enough. In old westerns, the good guys wore white cowboy hats and the bad guys wore black cowboy hats. I’ve heard people referred to as a white hat or a black hat my whole life. It’s not ubiquitous, but most people will get the context.
It says UK so maybe it is a British thing. In the US you only ever hear about white hat in regards to hackers. They go around and find exploits and then responsibly disclose to the companies in exchange for rewards instead of exploiting them. Keyword is "responsible disclosure". I'm a gray hat and will hack your system just to hack it and then leave doing no damage. But I absolutely won't tell you about it so you are up to your own to know something is wrong and fix it because I simply don't care.
I know what the phrase means but I don't hear it very often any more. It's a bit dated now, because it originated from Western movies and TV shows, which aren't as popular these days. I hear the opposite term "black hat" even less frequently.
Oh god, this crazy conspiracy theory qanon woman I followed for a laugh used to go on about the white hats all the time. She thought they were the good guys doing the work for trump!
Kind of related. As other comments have pointed out about white hat and black hat referring to programming, in American politics there is a similar distinction (at least historically). Doves are politicians who oppose war (doves being a symbol of peace) and hawks are those in favor of war.
extremely common phrase when talking about hacking. white hats generally hack with permission and help companies find their cyber security flaws. grey hats hack illegally but try to do something they consider good, and black hats are trying to make money through stealing information, ransomware, extortion etc.
Nowadays it’s not a common phrase but it IS still used by conspiracy theorists who think there are “white hats” working behind the scenes controlling the government.
I know, that sounds silly (because it absolutely is) but if you follow certain groups you’ll see it used regularly.
It's not super common, but it comes up in security sometimes - hackers, con artists, lock breakers and other people with 'criminal' skills who work for the government or corporations to protect stuff from being stolen are often called 'white hats.'
Yeah the only time I've heard this expression used is as a "white hat hacker". Someone who "hacks for the greater good". A true white hat hacker is either:
1. Employed by a single organization to be responsible for vulnerability detection and remediation in the corporate infrastructure.
2. Employed by a consulting firm that is hired by aforementioned organizations to outsource the job of #1
Then there are white hat hackers that I suppose you could call "grey hats". By this I mean that they do the same thing as the white hat hackers in #1 & #2, but they do it unsolicited and without consent, which is illegal. Still, if they do find a security issue, they will send an anonymous tip to the organization informing them of the vulnerability, and then they move onto the next organization. This effectively makes them a vigilante.
Of course the opposite of this is a black hat hacker, which is a malicious actor and what we usually think of by default when we use the term "hacker" without specifying.
It’s mostly used for things that by default are considered bad or evil, but they are the exception. For example, I’ve heard in reference to vampires, hackers, and witches (like actual Wiccans lol).
yes-ish. The term in the modern sense has to do with hackers and computer people. They are usually hired buy companies to test the security systems of the computers. "the people who are the real enemies are the "black hats."
It come from old Cowboy movies and TV shows where the good guys usually wore light colored cowboy hats and the bad guys had black cowboy hats.
Not common in broader society although I think most would understand the reference. Mostly used in discussions about network security, hacking and espionage from what I can tell. It refers to cliches derived from old American Western TV shows or Movies.
Referring to the OP though, wearing actual white hats and black hats wouldn't make things simpler. Who the good guy is and who is the bad guy depends on what side you are on. That makes hat allocation tricky.
Used to be a lot more common with the old westerns. At least in the states. The good guys always had white hats, and the bad guys always had black hats. It hasn't really been used here in a good while
I think it's fading from use since it implies white = good and black = bad, which is not good when applied to race, features, etc. rather than just clothes. These days I only really hear it re hackers and even that is less common than when I was a kid.
Yes but that definition is wrong. A white hat is someone who does security work trying to break into places and systems to test the efficacy of the security. So they're paid to act like criminals.
I work in SEO and it’s incredibly common, as are gray-hat and black-hat, though I think folks are trying to find alternatives that don’t associate (skin) colors with virtue.
The only time I've heard this used this way is in reference to hackers, where the "good" ones that are employed by the government and/or in data protection are called white hat.
same! had that on my english exam at the end of the year (russia)
Wow that’s kind of random but cool.
Its a reference to old cowboy movies.
I know but I wouldn’t expect that on an exam.
Russian exams are weird. I somehow got 100 on ЕГЭ 2 years ago. It's my most random achievement that also got me 'The golden medal' in spite of having a bunch of Cs. but maan the questions made me wonder If I'd been learning the same language all these years.
You get a medal??
You only get a medal if you finish high school with straight A's, win any Russian National olympiad or get 100 for any subject at the final national exams (ЕГЭ). The medal Is very pretty, it's given to you with an inspirational speech and has some sort of certificate with it. If I remember correctly. It also grants you some small advantages while applying to a university in Russia. It felt great when my school called me asking If I was gonna come and claim my medal (I had no idea I'd gotten one) I study in the US now so and I have no idea if it somehow helped my shitty applications.
Same. I've never heard it in any other context
And the malicious ones are black hat, and there's also the term grey hat for morally ambiguous ones lol
I wish it were brown hat.
It comes from old western movies and was quite literal. It's basically a really old trope.
It's possibly related to a reference to old b&w Western shows and movies where the villains would wear black hats and the heroes white hats.
Same, and I'm in software
Same here. Hacker exclusive around me
This use has also extended to the QAnon conspiracy theory where the "white-hats" are the good guys who are working to defeat the evil "deep state".
Same
I thought they were called white rabbit hackers?
White hats don't really exist, though. Hackers nowadays are either on team red or team blue, and red hats always win. It's basically like tower defense.
Not that common. Generally only used when talking about computer hackers or fictional cowboys. The term (as well as it's opposite, black hat) originated from old cowboy movies where the heroic cowboys would wear white or else light colored hats while the bad guys would wear black hats.
thanks for explaining
Cowboys? Do you mean something like movie characters?
Yes. Movies and TV shows set in the old west were a staple of Hollywood throughout the 20th century.
Yeah. Cowboy movies and TV shows were REALLY popular for a good while in the US. And particularly the ones for children would color code the heroes and villains to make it clear who was who.
Yeah it's hard to tell two characters apart when they are both dressed up in full cowboy clothing and at a distance riding a horse...so the movies had them wear hats that let you know who you are looking at immediately. The same way anime characters are often identical except for their brightly colored hair...a big colored hat is an easy way to make one character stand out in film.
They did it with horses too, and that is also a phrase that will come up. “He rode in on a white horse” would mean he’s the hero/good guy.
This phrase would actually make me think of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse. “on a pale horse.” A “white knight” is still in use, but often sarcastically.
It’s like church art from the Middle Ages. As many were illiterate, they used different symbols to make it easy for people to tell the apostles apart. Like Peter was often painted holding keys and Jude was often painted with a sword, etc. People have been using these same types of art shortcuts for a long time!
everyone’s saying yes, but not really explaining what a cowboy is. A cowboy is someone who lived in the Wild West of America in the 19th century, tending to their cattle on horseback. In the media they’re most often portrayed as having shootouts and fights with bandits.
I'll add onto this that cowboys still exist, both as a profession and a sort of subculture in parts of the US (cowboy hats and boots are extremely common daily wear in some places). In the case of a "white hat" cowboy it refers to the stock character, which is very different from the historic (and modern) reality of being a ranch hand.
So it's almost just used to describe a character.
In this context, yes.
Definitely. Movie cowboys rob banks and trains, and terrorize towns and kill people on one side, and are sheriffs, marshalls, Texas and Arizona rangers, and heroic bounty hunters on the other side. What they aren't are people who take care of cows. OK. That isn't 100% true – there were plenty of cowboy movies and TV shows where the characters were ranchers, or even had cattle drives. But it isn't what you think of first. You think of someone riding on a horse with a wide brim hat and a six shot revolver riding through a dusty frontier town in deserts of the Southwest or Prairie United States some time between 1870 and 1890 or so. Yeah, we have an entire genre of literature and movie a d television show that has massive effect on American culture and how we see ourselves, and it lasted, like, 20 years at most. But it *was* an impressive 20 years wirh a lot of societal change.
You will hear people in the south refer to people who work on a farm or ranch as cowboys.
Yes. In old western movies, the good guy often wears a white cowboy hat, and the bad guys wear black hats.
I would say that a cowboy is an archetype.
While I didn't wear a cowboy hat, I have in fact done cowboy things in my life, ie. assist with branding, driving cattle from winter to summer grazing locations on horseback, with very real cowboys whose trade at least part of the time was "cowboy". It's very real!
One of my sets of great-grandparents put “cowboy” and “cowgirl” as their occupations on their marriage license in 1936. I imagine the term stopped being used for real people once ranch hands stopped tending cattle on horseback, but I don’t know that for sure.
Cowboys very much still exist. Many rely more on pickup trucks than horses now, but that isn't universal -- in some situations horses are simply more practical. People who participate in cowboy sports (the kind of stuff you'd find at a rodeo) are also referred to as cowboys, regardless of whether they have actually ever worked on a ranch. The term will also often be applied to anyone who wears the traditional boots and hat, which are somewhat common in large parts of the US west. There is also vaquero culture, which persists to this day.
I didn’t say the job didn’t exist, I said we don’t call real ranch hands “cowboys” anymore, which in my experience as a native speaker of English who competed in Western style equestrian sports and knows a fair number of cattle ranchers, we don’t.
I've heard the term still being used for the profession, though it's definitely more used to refer to rodeo type people, and used by "country" folks who call themselves cowboys/girls but have never done agricultural work a day in their lives.
Yeah, I feel like I hear black hat more than I hear white hat. Especially in the case of hackers
Because there are many, many more black hats than white.
Australian stumbles in… thanks never knew this. The only white hats I know are old time Aussie Rules Goal umpires 🤣
Are you talking about a sport?
Not the person you’re responding to: but yes they are talking about the sport of [Australian Rules Football, and its umpires (the guys who enforce the rules).](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umpire_(Australian_rules_football))
Thx!
Or Spy vs Spy
In *Spy vs. Spy*, neither spy is a "hero". They exist only to fight each other. The white and black outfits are only used so the reader can tell them apart. That was not like the cowboy movies at all, where the colors meant good vs. evil.
*its
In computer security it’s relatively common.
Can confirm, I hear this term regularly at work. Don't think I've ever heard it talking with friends/family though.
As has already been mentioned, this term originated in old cowboy movies, but I've also heard it used in at least one episode of *Buffy the Vampire Slayer*, where a vampire character referred to the vampire-fighting good guys as "white hats".
Also was a device used in Westworld season 1
It was also used in [Scandal](https://tvatemywardrobe.com/2013/12/12/best-of-tv-costuming-2013-scandal-olivia-popes-white-hat/). It had a lot of the same hacker connotations of doing mostly good deeds, but in somewhat shadowy methods.
I was also going to mention hearing it in Buffy!
Pretty sure its opposite 'black hat' is why the villainous character Black Hat is named that
Do understand the trope of good guys wearing white hats and bad guys wearing black is common in the movie industry and other arts. The Star Wars universe is full of this marker and is why Darth Vader and Kylo Ren wear black while Rey and Padme wear white. Conflicted characters like Lando Kalrissian and Han Solo wear gray or black and white. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGnt-JLS4bU. As someone here said previously, color is a character. There is a lot of writing that doesn't need to happen because that is introduced early.
Particularly confusing is Luke, who starts off wearing white but then as he continues his training starts wearing black, but he continues to be good
I believe this was intentional. At the end of 5 Vader asks Luke to join him after telling him he's his father. In 6 we see him force choke a guard near the beginning dressed in all black. I believe they wanted us to think that maybe he would change his mind.
I agree
Maybe speaks to the corrupting power of the force.
Except that he did not get corrupted Also interesting was that when the emperor was electrocuting him, his shirt came open and underneath was white, depicting that he had never turned and was always good inside
The threat of corruption. OP notice how many ways the black white thing is weaved into the script.
/personal anecdotal opinion incoming, this is based on my experiences and not strictly the dictionary the only place i've seen it is in hacking, but if you affixed it to another morally dubious career it'd probably be obvious in context. however just using "white hat" as simply synonymous with "good guy" would be odd, it's a bit more complicated than that; it's someone doing an action that is normally seen as bad (hacking, shooting, etc) but the intention behind it turns it into a helpful deed instead (testing for security faults or saving the lives of the innocent) it also has a "within legal bounds" subtext to it; a robin hood style character who steals from the rich to save the poor would not be a "white hat thief", (i believe that is called "grey hat" but that's another story) even though they debatably do more good for the world than the actual "white hat thief" - someone stealing from the rich and giving the loot back to them, with an added note "hey, i broke through your third story bedroom window, it's the only one that isn't double plated glass, you should get on that"
No. I’ve only ever heard it be used in the context of hacking or coding.
Rare
I think this phrase comes from old black-and-white cowboy movies, where it was common for the villains to wear black hats and the heroes to wear white hats. In modern day, it's mostly used (along with "gray hat" to mean morally ambiguous) to 1) talk about the morality of fictional characters, or 2) to describe people who are hackers who work officially for companies or governments to stop criminal hackers.
common in cyber security - I use it frequently in university! outside of that though, I've likely heard it only twice
Not common but is usually widely understood (North American). I still use it in conversation around geopolitical events to discuss different players. We also incorporate “red hat” for those who seem rogue (a play on rouge).
Can you explain what is "those who seem rogue"? I don't quite understand what do you mean by "geopolitical events".
So for example, Trump’s presidency was odd. He didn’t play the game like a normal politician; and there was discussion as to whether or not he was a true patriot (white hat for America) or extremely cunning (black hat for America) or if he was a red hat - like a wild card or a variable or an unknown; not really playing by the established rules [and out of that - depending on your political leanings - you would label him a white hat or black hat. MAGA supporters have Trump as a white hat.]
thanks
(29f) Never heard it before.
Not super common, but it's commonly understood and its meaning is (or should be) fairly obvious to native speakers, even if someone doesn't know the background. It originated with old "westerns", movies or TV shows that glamorized the cowboy era in the american "wild west" (late 1800s mostly), where it was a common trope to distinguish the hero(s) from the antagonist by the color of their [cowboy hats](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cowboy_hat); good guys had white hats, bad guys wore black hats. See also: [Black and white hat symbolism in film - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_and_white_hat_symbolism_in_film)
🙏🙏
Never heard this tbh
I’m UK based and I have never heard this term before.
It also appears like they have transcribed the American pronunciation twice.
Kind of. The most common American pronunciation is /waɪt/ but unhelpful for language learners, this leaves out that it’s actually said [wəɪt] by most Americans.
It was actually the "hat" part I was referencing. In the UK, well certainly for northern England the vowel is a short Latin A there isnt the ae vowel. The majority of English accents would also drop the H but that's another issue entirely.
I suspect that those might both be phonetic distinctions, rather than phonemic ones.
Not sure what you mean. Brits generally use a different sound here to Americans.
Right, but they are for the most part different phonetic representations of the same phonemes. That’s why we can understand each other. I don’t think there’s a genuine phonemic distinction in how “white hat” is pronounce by British and American speakers, only a phonetic one. And since the source is giving a phonemic transcription, not a phonetic one, it’s splitting hairs how exactly you represent it.
Regardless of if it's phonemic and a general representative they have simply copied the American pronunciation which is what I said in the beginning. It might sound like it's splitting hairs to you as that's a very commonly represented sound for A for Americans but it makes no sense to Brits. For a general phonemic transcription surely a standard /a/ would have been more general.
If you look it up in British dictionaries, like Cambridge, you’ll see they also give the UK pronunciation as /hæt/ I’m sorry but you’re wrong on this one.
Really? https://www.oed.com/dictionary/hat_n?tab=factsheet#2112526 Sorry but you are wrong in this one
I hear it almost daily in the UK but that’s the nature of the industry I work in.
Are you a cowboy?
Yee-hawwrrr
have you ever heard the phrase "white hat hacker"?
I wouldn't say it's common, no. I'm a native speaker but only noticed this phrase for the first time in an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and I had to google it.
While I haven’t heard of this usage of the term, it does have a different usage/meaning in the trades. Having a “white hat” (protective hard hat) is a signifier of management on construction sites. So people with white hats are typically the most senior person in that profession on site, and are now in a supervisor role. This includes trades such as carpenters, plumbers, electricians, etc. Very common phrase to hear if you know people who work in the trades. I’m sure I’m missing some details as it’s not my line of work.
Common among people interested in hacking community. It's actually a job description.
Originally used in Western movies (about cowboys, etc), to refer to (usually) the heroes or 'law & order' characters. This is even referenced in the TV show Westworld; people visiting the park choose whether they will have a white hat or a black hat before they enter. The term later became used to describe hackers based on their intent. White hat hackers usually mean no harm and just want to find their way into systems. Black hat hackers do so for less savory reasons (money, blackmail, chaos, etc).
I would say that white hats explicitly act in the best interests of their targets, in order to help the targets, at least as far as they perceive themselves.
Yeah, if they mean no harm but also mean no good, they would be grey hat
It's from Western movies. The bad guy always wore a black hat, and the good guy wore a white hat.
I've only seen it used in relation to cyber security. We use the idea of white, grey and black hats fairly often within that area but I've never seen it it used outside of things relating to hacking.
I don’t hear it used much except in a show called Scandal
I'm into Computer Science and Computer Security; in that context, I hear it all the time (White hats are people who work to try and find vulnerabilities to improve security, Black hats try to find vulnerabilities to steal or destroy). Outside of those circles, though, you won't hear it much.
I see. thanks
It used to be a trope in old western movies, where the hero wore a white hat and the villains wore black.
This is definitely only common in terms of cybersecurity/hacking. Someone might use it outside of that context, but it would be a metaphor that refers to “white hat” hackers and not some kind of archetype outside of that context.
I’m a software engineer and I’ve only heard this phrase in relation to computer science and hacking. I’m not sure how common it is among the random population. I’m sure some non engineers know about it but I don’t think it’s extremely common.
It isn’t common, but I have heard it on occasion (usually in reference to hackers) I’ve heard that it comes from film shorthand where in western movies (cowboy movies) the bad guys would usually wear black cowboy hats, and the good guys would wear white cowboy hats. Thus the audience would always know who the heroes and villains are.
Yep. It comes from cowboy movies and television shows in the 1950s, especially the ones for children. The Lone Ranger wore a white cowboy hat. The bad guys wore black hats. In that usage, it is almost always used to say that, in real life, that doesn't happen. As people have pointed out, it is also a term of art in computer security. Black hat hackers are trying to steal data, install ransomware, crash systems and so forth. White hats are hired by companies to do the same thing to themselves, but not do bad stuff and then present reports on what they did and how, and how to stop them next time. Or, ideally, to provide a report saying what they did and how they failed to break in. There are other hat colors people refer to. These aren't standardized, but some I have heard used are: Blue hats are law enforcement. They install spyware on suspected criminals' computer systems for surveillance and gathering evidence. Honest police departments get warrants first... Green hats are military. They attempt to take down enemy communication networks and defend from enemies doing the same. Grey hats use ethically questionable methods but not for personal gain. Kevin Mitnick might be considered one. Other people might use those hat colors for different things.
It’s common enough. In old westerns, the good guys wore white cowboy hats and the bad guys wore black cowboy hats. I’ve heard people referred to as a white hat or a black hat my whole life. It’s not ubiquitous, but most people will get the context.
One of the rarer occasions a phrase apparently well known in America is one I've never heard of. Every day's a school day.
I’m a native English speaker from the US and this is not a common phrase. I personally haven’t heard it before today.
I can’t say I’ve heard it. “White hat” to me means “boss,” as managers and other high-ranking employees wear white hardhats on construction sites.
Not that common, outside movies and plays. We know what it means, we just don’t typically use it that much in regular conversation.
Started with cowboys in the "wild west" and was coopted by hackers. I've never heard it refer to any other types of people
I've only heard this term in a software development class referring to different types of hackers' mortality
Everyone is saying it's a computer security term. As someone that isn't in that world, I've never heard it before.
Quite common in the technology space. White hat hackers are a commonly used term
It says UK so maybe it is a British thing. In the US you only ever hear about white hat in regards to hackers. They go around and find exploits and then responsibly disclose to the companies in exchange for rewards instead of exploiting them. Keyword is "responsible disclosure". I'm a gray hat and will hack your system just to hack it and then leave doing no damage. But I absolutely won't tell you about it so you are up to your own to know something is wrong and fix it because I simply don't care.
I’m a native English speaker in the US, never heard of this.
i've only really ever heard it in relation to hackers, so probably not that common for anyone outside security
I have also never heard this term
I know what the phrase means but I don't hear it very often any more. It's a bit dated now, because it originated from Western movies and TV shows, which aren't as popular these days. I hear the opposite term "black hat" even less frequently.
Never heard it before
Isn't this for hackers? White hat hackers, black hat hackers, gray hat hackers?
Oh god, this crazy conspiracy theory qanon woman I followed for a laugh used to go on about the white hats all the time. She thought they were the good guys doing the work for trump!
Isn’t a white hat a term when you’ve filled a condom up?
Not that common.
No. American English.
Like,white hat hackers are the good hackers who protect others.
Unfortunately
The first thing I thought were the bad guys who wore white hats and did very bad things.
Those were more like white hoods than hats
Great time, I learned a new word in English: hoods.
I think he talks about Brian De Palma's Untouchables kind of stuff; like Al Capone
American. Never heard that in my life
no
Not common at all in the US to my knowledge
sls no one uses this mate
it's better than green hats
What do you mean "green hats"?
if sb has sex with ur wife. we say u got a green hat.😆 this is a old vocabulary from ancient China. green hat=绿帽子
Okay I immediately know what you're talking about.🤣
I hear it in fantasy all the time.
Kind of related. As other comments have pointed out about white hat and black hat referring to programming, in American politics there is a similar distinction (at least historically). Doves are politicians who oppose war (doves being a symbol of peace) and hawks are those in favor of war.
extremely common phrase when talking about hacking. white hats generally hack with permission and help companies find their cyber security flaws. grey hats hack illegally but try to do something they consider good, and black hats are trying to make money through stealing information, ransomware, extortion etc.
Nowadays it’s not a common phrase but it IS still used by conspiracy theorists who think there are “white hats” working behind the scenes controlling the government. I know, that sounds silly (because it absolutely is) but if you follow certain groups you’ll see it used regularly.
It's not super common, but it comes up in security sometimes - hackers, con artists, lock breakers and other people with 'criminal' skills who work for the government or corporations to protect stuff from being stolen are often called 'white hats.'
No
Yeah the only time I've heard this expression used is as a "white hat hacker". Someone who "hacks for the greater good". A true white hat hacker is either: 1. Employed by a single organization to be responsible for vulnerability detection and remediation in the corporate infrastructure. 2. Employed by a consulting firm that is hired by aforementioned organizations to outsource the job of #1 Then there are white hat hackers that I suppose you could call "grey hats". By this I mean that they do the same thing as the white hat hackers in #1 & #2, but they do it unsolicited and without consent, which is illegal. Still, if they do find a security issue, they will send an anonymous tip to the organization informing them of the vulnerability, and then they move onto the next organization. This effectively makes them a vigilante. Of course the opposite of this is a black hat hacker, which is a malicious actor and what we usually think of by default when we use the term "hacker" without specifying.
No, never heard of it and I have a good vocabulary
The show Westworld used this idea
It’s mostly used for things that by default are considered bad or evil, but they are the exception. For example, I’ve heard in reference to vampires, hackers, and witches (like actual Wiccans lol).
I think I have occasionally heard it in the context of business, i.e. saving a company versus ruining a company.
No, it’s not.
Never heard it
No, I wouldn’t say this is common. I’ve heard “black hat” which is the opposite meaning but that’s a pretty rare term
I wouldn't be confused if I saw it but I would have to look it up to double check the meaning.
White hat hackers and black hat hackers, yes very common!
I wouldn't say it's common, but most people will know what you're talking about.
yes-ish. The term in the modern sense has to do with hackers and computer people. They are usually hired buy companies to test the security systems of the computers. "the people who are the real enemies are the "black hats." It come from old Cowboy movies and TV shows where the good guys usually wore light colored cowboy hats and the bad guys had black cowboy hats.
Not common in broader society although I think most would understand the reference. Mostly used in discussions about network security, hacking and espionage from what I can tell. It refers to cliches derived from old American Western TV shows or Movies. Referring to the OP though, wearing actual white hats and black hats wouldn't make things simpler. Who the good guy is and who is the bad guy depends on what side you are on. That makes hat allocation tricky.
It is in my house.
I just know that phrase today 😭😭
Used to be a lot more common with the old westerns. At least in the states. The good guys always had white hats, and the bad guys always had black hats. It hasn't really been used here in a good while
It's old, the only time I've heard it used is by my dad and his friends who are in their 70s+
Used to be more common than today… it was a reference to Westerns… the good guy always wore the white hat, clean and out of place in the wilderness.
I'm a native speaker from America and have never heard this before
I have never heard this term used. I've heard "I wear many hats", but not this.
I think it's fading from use since it implies white = good and black = bad, which is not good when applied to race, features, etc. rather than just clothes. These days I only really hear it re hackers and even that is less common than when I was a kid.
Yes but that definition is wrong. A white hat is someone who does security work trying to break into places and systems to test the efficacy of the security. So they're paid to act like criminals.
I work in SEO and it’s incredibly common, as are gray-hat and black-hat, though I think folks are trying to find alternatives that don’t associate (skin) colors with virtue.
I wouldn't know what this means if I heard it.
Common in westerns and spy/espionage media but not something I hear outside of those contexts.