Categorising cyber criminals

An article by Eric Chadbrow ( http://www.bankinfosecurity.com/blogs.php?postID=1206 ) prompted me to look at the different attempts at trying to slot hackers into categories as I had discussed Raoul Chiesa's Hacker Profiling Project with University students whilst teaching on Computer Security and Forensic courses. There have been a number of attempts at trying to slot hackers into categories since Landreth's book "Out of the inner circle" in 1989. I have tabulated the main attempts I found and it is interesting to see how the view on hackers has changed since 1989.

Eric Chabrow (2012)	McAfee (2011)	Roger Grimes (2011)	Marcus Rogers (2008)	Chiesa (2006)	Landreth (1989)
Script Kiddies	Script Kiddies	Cyber criminals	Novice	Wannabe lamer	Novice
Hacking Group	Black Hat Hackers	Spammers and adware spreaders	Cyber-punks	Script-kiddie	Student
Hacktivists	White Hat Hackers	Advanced persistent threat (APT) agents	Internals	Cracker	Tourist
Black Hat Professionals	Hacktivists	Corporate spies	Coders	Ethical hacker	Crasher
Organized Criminal Gangs	State Sponsored Hackers	Hactivists	Old guard hackers	Quiet paranoid and skilled hacker (QPS)	Thief
Nation States	Corporate Spy Hackers	Cyber warriors	Professional criminals	Cyber-warrior
Automated Tool *	Cyber Terrorists	Rogue hackers	Information warriors/cyber-terrorists	Industrial spy
				Government agent
				Military hacker

The view of hackers has moved on from the collection of computer enthusiasts at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the 1960's to today's mainstream use of the term to mean a person who subverts security around a computer system, whether for non-legal (Black Hat Hacker) or legal purposes (White Hat Hacker). With Eric Chabrow's list of categories it is evident that he concentrated on illegal activities of a hacker even through in his article he says "Not all that fall into the hacker category are cyber criminals" I would propose that adding a category of White Hat Professional to cover the non-governmental ethical hacker and security researcher who test computer security with the permission and blessing of the owner of the system would provide a better Taxonomy for classification of hackers.