[criley]

Did you honestly just use militarized cyberwarfare as an example of legitimate black hat?

The US/Israel are involved in a proxy war with Iran that involves cyberwarfare, clandestine operations and conventional military strikes (in the case of Israel striking Iranian-sourced Syrian weaponry).

It's an extremely poor example to use open cyberwarfare between nations engaged in everything but overt warfare to attempt to legitimize black hat hacking.

[err_badprocrast]

I'm curious how you would classify China's crack teams engaging in industrial espionage. Is that black hat activity, or legitimate cyberwarfare by a nation-state?

[chc]

I think criley's point is that if your activities closely resemble international warfare, they probably aren't "legitimate" by any reasonable standards.

[err_badprocrast]

after re-reading it, you do appear to be correct. Thanks for the correction.