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Hackers vs. crackers, security, & fun at Defcon
XLawyer writes "In an article about Defcon, a reporter from the New York Times tried reasonably hard to explain and observe the difference between hackers, who like to figure out how things work, and crackers, who like to get into other people's things and sometimes stop them from working. An interesting item in the article shows how crackers make reporters' jobs harder by calling themselves "hackers." " The article itself is well written, and lucid with some telling interviews; (NYT requires free login, BTW)
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And what did they conclude ? Compulsive voyeurism visible in the tendancy to intrude systems belonging to others, while same discoveries could be done with one own system ? Perticular influencability from TV series picturing wrongly crackers as being cool, and inability do tell the right from the wrong ? Childish behavior/adolescent rebellion against the society, by means of act of vandalisms ? I'm interested ! Where/when will they publish an article ?
The l0pht guys announced "AntiSniffer", software to detect the presence of a sniffer (ie someone with a NIC in promiscuous mode, thus collecting every frame that passes over the wire) on a LAN.
They are on the right track. They just need to get a decent name, stop the black/white hat non-sense, and leave the dark side, to become standard hackers. Also if they could study computer science (or at least books, and some articles available on the WWW), they could help the implementation of robust security models on free Unices.
In paragraphs previous to the one you quote, it showed that a person's home was raided but never charged. If you call harassment a "working crackdown", I wonder what you would call it when the Feds actually got their guy the first time, and not having to flash badges and raid homes to ruffle feathers. I've seen that kind of thing on the movies, but come on, its the movies.
violust@icelab.net
"Guru." Although it sort of begs a specific subject, as in "crypto guru" (but that has its own word, "cypherpunk").
Wankers are the people than constantly whine about the misuse of the word "hacker" by the media and their peers. The prevalent characteristic of wanker personality is their anal-retentiveness. These people refuse to believe that a word can have several definitions (aparently they've never studied linguistics or even browsed through a copy of Webster's). Wankers go through great lengths to "inform" the unwashed masses of their flawed use of the language. Avoid them at all costs.
Argh!
Okay Slashdotters, we need a new word which means (hacker|geek|nerd) and which the media haven't hijacked yet. I propose "snlork". Knowing my luck, it's probably a curse word in some language :-S
What's wrong with rebellion against society?
OK, so those of you who explore your own systems don't want to be called by the same name as people who explore others' systems. Fine, but could you stop abusing the term cracker? Crackers are people who crack software, and don't want to be lumped in the same category with someone else any more than you hypocrites do.
...is very easy to avoid. Cut the TX wire on your NIC. (check the history about 'Beferd' for more).
... the ones who were 'on the line' go to the bright side. Good. And the _real_ evil ones, those that are better than anyone else, simply hide and let us pretend they're gone too.
"Nerd" was always too negative for me. So is "geek"...
"SlashDot: News For Nerds. Stuff That Matters."?
Seems to me we (at least ought to) embrace the appellation "nerd" as much as "geek".
I've been meaning to hash this out for a while, and it's close enough to being on-topic now, so here goes:
I've always thought of myself as a nerd, but to me it does not mean the "Poindexter"-type image (goofy, pocket-protector-wearing, glasses taped together, etc.). I've never even known anyone who fit that stereotype, and I've always been offended by it. To me, "nerd" generally means "someone who is smart, and therefore finds intellectual things interesting which are above the heads of the non-smart non-nerds, who therefore think the nerd is weird and unfairly stereotype him as the Poindexter-type because he uses big words that they don't understand".
For a while, it seemed to me that "geek" should really mean what they meant by "nerd", while "nerd" remained a good thing, though some others seem to have it the other way around, but now I think these are both wrong: it's not that one means "smart person" and the other means "goofy guy with broken glasses". Rather, they're pretty much synonymous. "Normal" people use both to mean "goofy guy", but, in a sort of "geek pride movement", we reject the negative connotations in both cases, wearing our SlashDot and "Blood, Sweat, and Code" t-shirts, etc.
Maybe it's a situation where: they use some word to insult us; we start calling ourselves the same thing and meaning it in a good way, considering some other word to mean the bad thing; they start insulting us with the new word; we adopt it as well; etc. When I think of it this way, it's actually kind of silly, like most of "Political Correctness" in general.
I suppose "dork" might mean all the bad things that people usually have in mind when they say "nerd" or "geek", and to me it does not seem to have any of the good connotations, i.e., a dork is just Poindexter-ish, without necessarily being particularly smart. The cycle doesn't repeat because "dork" doesn't mean anything good, and I for one have no intention of taking it as a compliment. Then, the problem with non-geeks' perception of us is not that they call us nerds or geeks, but the fact that they think that nerds and geeks are also dorks. Hence, I am a nerd and a geek, but not, as most of the people I went to high school with seemed to think, a dork.
As for the difference between "nerd" and "geek", they are, as I said, pretty much the same, but with slightly different connotations. How about this: I tend to think that a nerd is someone who is generally smart, including computer nerds as well as math nerds, physics nerds, chemistry nerds, and even literature nerds, while geeks are specifically the computer-oriented subset of nerds.
Thoughts?
David Gould
David Gould
main(i){putchar(340056100>>(i-1)*5&31|!!(i<6)<< 6)&&main(++i);}
http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/faqs/h acker-howto.html
--
- Sean
It's a fine line between trolling and karma-whoring... and I think I just crossed it.
- Sean
o.0
I think there would be a number of people that would take exception to your assertion that "people on the math end of the cryptography game, or any one else doing abstract algo stuff" can't be considered to be hackers.
I think they have just as much claim to the name as anyone else here. Of course some more than others, but that's just the point...
Hacking is a mindset; it has nothing whatsoever to do with some specific ability.
To be a coder, you have to be able to code.
To be a hacker, you have to have an innate curiosity about the world around you and how it works. Whether that is restricted to the computer world, or whether it encompasses the physical, mental, natural or electronical (or any other) worlds...
It so happens that most "computer hackers", as a result of this curiosity, want to find out how the computers work; what makes 'em tick... and this in turn leads to an ability to at least understand (if not write) code.
But it's not a requirement.
Don't get your causes mixed up with your effects.
Hacking most definitely does not rely on an ability to code... or an ability to do anything else for that matter.
It is a mindset.
And a "mathematician" (your term) who has the correct mindset, would be just as much a hacker as I (a coder) am... probably moreso.
--
- Sean
It's a fine line between trolling and karma-whoring... and I think I just crossed it.
- Sean
He who is without sin throw the first stone..
Anyone out there who is proficient in more than 2 programming languages that have to be compiled, though awk and sed scripting does count, that haven't been guilty of some sort of hacking and cracking in their lives is a total dork, and is living in a basement somewhere and afraid to face the real world. I haven't done anything script kiddie-ish in at least 15 years.
Still, I think that is one of the rites of passage for a creative, ambitious mind.
Hacking, and cracking (in every definition) do have one thing in common, they require creativity, and problem solving skills. This is good.. We need more creativity and better problem solving skills in this industry. Also, we need these people pounding away at our stuff keeping us honest. Anyone whining about script kiddies is an idiot who can't secure their boxes!!
Get a grip, and let it go!
There is no better word, for coder with inate ability to understand Good Design and propose stunningly elegant solutions. So there is no reason to surrender.
The ambiguity allows to judge someone based on the meaning he associates to "hackers". The permanent discussion about "hacker" vs "cracker", is not just vocabulary nitpicking, but it is also a fight between genuine hackers and slashdot kiddies, about the idea that "intruding systems" is more mediocre than cool. There is no glory for intruding, only shame ; they would say (me included), and slashdot kiddies would disagree.
But then if everyone agreed on everything, there would be no discussion and slashdot would only be a repository of links to informations.
I'm going to explain it one more time. Only a yound adolescent that watched too much TV, or a grown-up with a sick mentality, would spent his time cracking systems belonging to others. I am too curious about the design and internals of the OSes, machines, programs, ..., but I explore them on my own machine. Of course! It is something completly surrealistic, to watch people seriously telling that they crack, because of their curiosity. That's simply not true. They crack, because they love to invade some kind of privacy of others, and because of TV. But what would you think of someone that would dismantle your car on the grounds that "he is curious about cars internal" ?
Probably that he is on crack (see, a bad justification for the "crackers"). "Why the FUCKING HELL aren't you dismantling your car and explore his internals ?" will you probably shout. And you'll be right. And people despising intruders are similary right. And no amount of slashdot kiddies will change this fundemental fact.
You speak like you are 12. When I defend the use of Hacker, I am not speaking of 14 year old script kiddies whacking websites like they are popping pez. I am speaking on behalf of myself and my friends. I no longer do any "black-hat" stuff. I have no desire. But I will say, that in the mid-80's it was much harder to find a Unix box to play around with, than it is now. Unless you were a university student at that time. The availability to most people to have one in their home to explore was rare. I have friends that were prosecuted for having nothing more than informational documents to the use of phone systems in their possession (They didn't take it. They just had it on their box.)
Now as with any community there were people that wanted nothing more than that feeling of power that comes with getting root and 0wning your box. The hackers I defend were out for information, not simply to intrude into your property. The drive to learn, was the goal..
Jarod
Adding the was a good idea :)
:)
...Student, Artist, Techie - Geek *
Seriously though, I think you're right.
A "Cracker" is a criminal, no matter what the justification, "Cracking" is a crime. A Craker may dislike a company, but does the Cracker stop to think about the knock on effect...?
Boss: We've been hacked * he'll mean "cracked"
Sys-Admin: Erm, yeah, I'll fix it.
Boss: You f*cking *@~&$
Sys-Admin: Sorry, some kids messed around, won't happen again...
Boss: Better not you complete....
Sys-Admin: Hey, if you let us spend some money on... [blurb]
Boss: No, I give you enough, if you can't do your job, then you're outta here.
Guy gets sacked....
Sys-Admin goes home, fights with Wife, Kids upset etc... Now has no job, bad marriage. Wife in mood at her work, pisses off friend. Kids do badly in school etc...
I'm not talking crap here, these are real consequences of "victimless" crimes.
I rank "Crackers" along with makers of Viruses. I'd like to kill you all. I lost some work recently, my Virus Scanner was just over a month old, some stupid Excell virus cost me dearly... Thanks.
Hmm, guess this one's hit a sore spot
Mong.
* Paul Madley
*...Slacker, Artist, Techie - Geek *
Remember: Nothing is Cool.
The "the" was actually a close-bold html tag (/b) - read previous if this means nothing to you :)
...Student, Artist, Techie - Geek *
Mong.
* Paul Madley
*...Slacker, Artist, Techie - Geek *
Remember: Nothing is Cool.
Personnally, I can't see how you can be a Hacker without any coding ability.
Hardware engineers, people on the math end of the cryptography game, or any one else doing abstract algo stuff. They'll probably have to know some minimal C, but so will the script kiddie compiling teardrop on his platform.
The "crackers vs. hackers" debate come up on slashdot every time the media uses the term. People were debating this on Usenet and BBSes when I went online in the '80s, and the "trekkers vs. trekkies" debate has probably been around even longer.
I call it the Starfish Syndrome: most people don't know or care about the difference between a boy starfish and a girl starfish, but it's a big deal to the starfish. That's why John Q. Public doesn't care about "hackers" vs "crackers" and "trekkies" vs. "trekkers," but people on computer networks will endlessly debate the distinctions.
P.S. Someone mentioned "script kiddies." Awesome term! Really useful for d00dz who found a copy of AOHell on a web page.
Hmm... a hardware engineer who can't code (what about VHDL ?), sounds a be strange these days. But this may be a valid exception.
people on the math end of the cryptography game, or any one else doing abstract algo stuff.
They have a special name. They are called "mathematicians" ; not "hackers". Abstract algorithms has to do with design (so they are called designers ; but a designer should know how to code, otherwise it is a manager) or more often computer science (but then they are called "professors", not "hackers" :-).
It just occured to me that, given most Media companies have to cater to an audience, many of them might not want to use the word "cracker" due to its racist background. I can see it now:
"Crackers Break Into Maryland Bank"
Now, most people on this list would think of the computer cracker, but the majority of the people in America probably would think this was a racist title. You know the paper or magazine that printed this story could get deep trouble for it.
Am I off base here?
Y'know, most sites offering cracking utilities refer to it as hacking. If the net is any indication, few crackers think of themselves as such; they think of themselves as hackers. Gimme a break. The "true" hackers have lost this one -- the term has been lost to y'all forever. Like it was such a great word to begin with.
Just a little loose thought:
If a hacker is only a hacker when another hacker calls him as such then there are no real hackers, since the first hacker is a fraud since no hacker has called him a hacker.
--
"take the red pill and you stay in wonderland and I'll show you how deep the rabitt hole goes"
[]'s Victor Bogado da Silva Lins
^[:wq
Nothing. It is just one of these states most [male] adolescents must go through. There is nothing good or clever with it either. You can do more constructive things like trying to changing the society, but it won't change by much ; the advent of "computers" have much more changed the society than any rebels with any attitude. But well, there is freedom in many countries including US and EU, so living in the "underground" is left as a choice.
I think there would be a number of people that would take exception to your assertion that "people on the math end of the cryptography game, or any one else doing abstract algo stuff" can't be considered to be hackers.
I think they have just as much claim to the name as anyone else here. Of course some more than others, but that's just the point...
I disagree. A mathematician that can't code, couldn't be called a hacker, because there is a whole mythology, communauty, spirit for mathematics, with many anecdotes. The mindset is something like rather "seeking for absolute truth and elegance, and forget about the corrupt real world". Of course there are mathematicians that are super-hackers, but they can code, and well (for instance Knuth. Won programming contest by writing programs that worked straight out of the code - debugging was extremely painful when he learnt to program).
For an insight about the mathematical communauty, see bibliogrphies (for instance "Hardy" or the one about "Paul Erdos" which is probably one of the most eccentrics mathematicians).
Hacking is a mindset; it has nothing whatsoever to do with some specific ability.
To be a coder, you have to be able to code.
To be a hacker, you have to have an innate curiosity about the world around you and how it works. Whether that is restricted to the computer world, or whether it encompasses the physical, mental, natural or electronical (or any other) worlds...
It so happens that most "computer hackers", as a result of this curiosity, want to find out how the computers work; what makes 'em tick... and this in turn leads to an ability to at least understand (if not write) code.
But it's not a requirement.
For your description of "hacker", I would rather use the world "geek". I would accept the extension of hackers to different groups, but be warned that the mathematical communauty has its owns idiosyncrasies.
So what does hacking have to do with cracking and what do either have to do with computers? Computers are just a tool, hacking covers a lot more then computer systems and their security. Just because you can gain root on Joe Bob's porn server doesn't really mean you're a hacker. Computers are a tool, not a definitive medium that all hackers must know and all crackers must break into. People were cracking past security systems before Babbage was born. It could be said that fire was the first hack. I think people really don't understand what hacking entails, otherwise they would see this as a truly absurd discussion.
What this whole debate (generally) is really about is whether or not hacking a computer necessarily entails breaking past it's security measures. I'd say that answer is obvious to everyone. For instance If I don't like the way a piece of software conducts itself I may attempt to change it, this would be a hack. Whether it's at the hardware or the software level, hacking your own box is still hacking and usually does not necessitate breaking past your own security. Some times you may want to change the way someone else's system behaves, or bypass it's occasionally arbitrary restrictions on the information held within it. You may hack this system, you may be hacking it to crack into it, like cracking into a safe. These two process are different, just often used together to gain access and break through the systems security. I don't see why the difference isn't obvious. It's the same as the difference between driving a car and hot wiring it. You may need to hot wire it in order to drive it more effectively, but no one is going to say, "hey look at that guy hot wire that car though the drive thru".
Hacking is simply put, the implementation of superior knowledge to facilitate superior need (I hacked that car because I need to go faster).
Earlier this year, I was on irc (sorry, but we all do it sometimes) and a 13yr old Turkish kid proclaimed himself as a "hacker" - refusing to admit that he was wrong and actually wanted to be a "cracker". He said "it's up to me what I call myself". On this basis, I'm a Nuclear Brain Engineer.
The term "hacker" probably has a lot to do with the term "hack", a "hack" being a particularly dedicated journalist, or member of newsroom staff who slaves away to beat the deadline etc...
The point? In my experience, people who wrongly call themselves "hackers" are either;
or
None the less, ill-informity is nothing new, and nothing to get too heated about.
Mong.
* Paul Madley
*...Slacker, Artist, Techie - Geek *
Remember: Nothing is Cool.
Am I the only one who doesn't give a shit about the difference between a hacker and a cracker? I've been listening to the same sort of thing from trekkies for years ("I'm a trekker"), and I've no more sympathy for hackers than I do for trekkers.
Language is a fluid thing, and it's controlled to a major extent by the media. If the TV calls you a hacker, then you're a hacker.
The distinction between "hacker" and "cracker" is a useful one
I'm not saying that the distinction isn't useful, or that there isn't one. I'm saying that "hackers are bad" is one of those facts that Everyone KnowsTM.
Toilets flush in the opposite direction down south, bridges collapse if soldiers don't break step, Armageddon is a great movie, hackers are evil bastards. These are truths, they're just not true.
I wouldn't go so far as to say that. The term "hacker" already passes MomTest v1.0 (i.e. with my mom). Well, sort of. She's semi-computer-literate, but describes me as a "hacker" sometimes, even though I'm not really a coder in the strict sense of the word (I don't do C or Perl, but do DHTML, JavaScript, Apache junque, etc.).
Toilets flush in the opposite direction down south,
You mean...they don't? ;-)
These are truths, they're just not true.
All the more reason to jump on the ramparts and try and do battle to explain the difference. Sure, it gets tiring, but somebody's gotta do it.
cya
Ethelred
Everyone wants to be Ethelred. Even I want to be Ethelred.
Not quite true. The distinction between "hacker" and "cracker" is a useful one--to wildly generalize it, a "hacker" is essentially non-malicious, a cracker is not. Many (most?) of /.ers would describe themselves quite proudly as "hackers", and obviously do not take kindly to being portrayed in a negative light because of it.
I see no reason, therefore, not to try and defend that distinction.
cya
Ethelred
Everyone wants to be Ethelred. Even I want to be Ethelred.
Out of curiosity, what OSes does the US goverment use. I can imagine that there will be quite a few and I guess the newer ones all run NT. If that is so what will the implications be with BO2K out!!!
Today's mighty oak is just yesterday's nut that held its ground.
Personally I dont like the word hacker because- -------------
of the bad connotations. Makes me think of the
l33t hax0rs.
For programming i prefer the word "coder" as it
sounds a lot better.
Coder would be a great official substitute for
"hacker".
---------------------------------
"Annakin! Drop!"
"What was that Mr Qu-" *SPLAT*
First was the announcement by the Hack-Sec Klahn of their joint venture with IEC to put together an incedent response database based on profiling attackers. This is some pretty cool stuff..
Also at Defcon was a group of cognitive psychologists that were interviewing DC attendees. They were looking for insight into hacker and cracker mentalities. I was a test subject (I hung up my black hat years ago..), and I saw several of my fellow hackers, as well as some crackers being interviewed. We talked about when I got started hacking (20 years ago on a VIC-20!), when I was the cool kid in town because I had the 1200 baud modem, motivations behind my work with clients (in general, not specifics, of course) in helping to lock down networks.
I think that profiling efforts like this will be a great service to the infosec community for determining proper incident response techniques.
The cDc guys were their typical loud, light-show assisted selves, and bo2k may or may not be the hacking tool of choice for owning Windoze boxes, but it is at the very least useful in the context of remote administration of Windoze boxen. As for the ISS commentary about it being "child's play", I'm reserving judgement until I have a look at the source and play with it in my lab. The ISS guys are typically straight shooters, but recall that they are also a publicly held company, thus have a serious PR group to consider. The ISS announcement is definitely PR driven, we just need to know if it's accurate.
The l0pht guys announced "AntiSniffer", software to detect the presence of a sniffer (ie someone with a NIC in promiscuous mode, thus collecting every frame that passes over the wire) on a LAN. Cool stuff.
The unsig!
There isn't even agreement within the
On other
Option #1:
Hackers and crackers are nothing alike, and how dare you confuse the two!?
Option #2:
Hackers and crackers are two separate groups. Some hackers are crackers; some crackers are hackers. However, belonging to one category does not imply membership in the other. (This is my personal take on the subject.)
Option #3:
Crackers are a "specialized" form of hacker, but not all hackers are also crackers.
Option #3a:
Crackers are "immature" or "underdeveloped" hackers that either need to grow and mature or need to be ignored by the more "mature" hackers.
Unfortunately, with all this confusion, we end up with Option #4: Just call 'em all hackers because it's less confusing.
"Somebody exploded a letter-bomb today
He said the raids have frightened some of the young hackers. [sic] ... "People are afraid," he said. "There is a lot of pressure to go legit."
Good. This means the FBI crackdown is working. I'm generally skeptical about the "get tough on crime" approach, but it seems likely to work in the case of computer crime, in which the criminals are intelligent people with a potentially bright future: people with a lot to lose, and who know it.
--
But you forgot to tell that in your original post. At that time, I had plenty of fun with C64s and Apple-IIs and there were dozens of different computers (or you could use one of these computer creation kits in the magazines), as many hackers did. While I can see that for playing with Unix you needed to crack some systems, there is no glory in doing that; it is only in the good use of the Unices systems that there might be. Hoperful you learnt Unix well, discover email, and used CPU cycles to, say, solve chess endings.
For better or worse, custom is king when it comes to language usage. If the masses decide to call x a 'hacker', the a 'hacker' x is.
There's always a slight chance that geekdom could maintain a distinction within geekdom, but even if we do so it will always be a matter of trade jargon, and unlikely to make a dent in the behavior of the public at large.
Our best bet, I suppose, is to play on the current Star Wars mania, and instill in the public an awareness of the distinction between us and Dark Side 'hackers', so at least they won't confuse the world's most constructive geeks with the world's second-most destructive.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
This makes me remeber back in the days of arpanet then it was a closed network between military/goverment and universites. Back in the dasy then everybody using InterNet had respect for the whole thing, you could leave your unix system wide-open with guest/guest or games/games acounts and let unknown people log in to play games, surf the web (lynx/gopher) or program/compile. no firewalls, no proxies, no care for security. All users had respect and enjoyed the net with all its services. Then came the commersialation and public of the net that ruined the whole InterNet community that existed on USENET and IRC, etc.
Yes this is the painful problem. We have sysadmins with too much work to do, systems with little security (even Unix ; you have to keep track of the holes), etc... And then these idiotic crackers making life harder in addition of the users. In the best case alt.sysadmin.recovery will do ; in the worst cases poor sysadmin has to revert to books such as "Feeling Good" (D.Burns) :-/
The worse is that crackers claim they do nothing bad, and even help security, as if shooting randomly with guns in a town was a good way to show defects of the local police.
crackers - people on dazy on crack drug, also known as lowlife, white trash, losers, scr1pt k1dd13z.
As far as I remember, the "cracker/hacker" definitions given today by your friendly neighborhood free software hacker was cooked up a few years ago (can't remember who it was). Previous to that, I do not believe there was such a distinction and in fact, the term "cracker" was reserved mostly for programs who would break the copy protection of your game.
I wouldn't even give them as honorable a name as cracker. Script Kiddie fits so much better. One kid around here "discovered" FTP and thought he had broke into our systems once. No, he simply logged in with his username and password, and had all the usual access that brings.
When the Security professionals misuse the term hacker to mean cracker there is no hope for mainstream people to know the difference. Try not to be to conserned about names. In the /. world you're not a hacker untill other hackers call you one - according to ESR, et al other hackers. This is based on your coding skill and how much you give bask to OSS. When a hacker stops coding how long is it untill they are no longer hackers? If other hackers need to call you a hacker before you are acknowledged as one, when they stop calling you a hacker are you no longer a hacker?
zenray
>Okay, so requirement #1 to be a hacker is an ability to code.
more exactly, the requirement to be a COMPUTER HACKER is an ability to code.
Hacking is the love of understanding things and constructing things. This can be in other fields than computer but this is mostly used in the computer world. of course this also have taken the meaning to destroy things now (meaning hackers are fighting against) but I don't refer to hacker with this meaning in this post.
Knowing how to code is a requirement for a chacker in the computing field because you can't understand a computer if you never did some coding.
So yes, a computer hacker most know how to code. this don't made all coders hackers and this is not needed to be your main activity (ESR is a hacker but I'm not sure he has got a lot of time to code these days). Hackers are people that generally consider coding like an art and do it for the sake of doing it as much as because they need it.
If you want to know more about hacking check the hacker's howto, the loginataka and the jargon file . You can find them (or some link) on ESR webpage (check www.tuxedo.org/~esr et www.tuxedo.org/~esr/writings)
"The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers." Bill Gates,
>Language is a fluid thing, and it's controlled to a major extent by the media.
You are right. but why do the media call those we call crackers hackers? because they had the limelight before the hackers (the true ones) in the 80's (it's more interesting to talk about people cracking computers than to talk about people constructing things)so they had plenty of time to impose their definition. Now that the Free Software movement is gaining momentum this is a unique occasion for us to revert this trend and impose our definition.
Oh, and why would our definition be more accurate than theirs? it's not more "accurate", it's a name, a label. It just occur that we used this word in this sense before and we love it so we want it back.
"The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers." Bill Gates,
It seems that the same people who whine about "crackers" being called "hackers" will then go ahead and tell you that "seti@home was hacked"...
I'm not even sure what "hacker" is meant to connotate - just a hardcore programmer, or someone who's expert level? When I started out professionally in the early 80's (UK), "hacker" was actually a negative term for a undisciplined programmer who didn't really know what he was doing. Only if you were obviously NOT a hacker would you ever call your activity hacking! (e.g. "I just hacked together an assembler last night" - somehow I doubt today's "hackers" are that good..).
it all goes down to an opposition between the Majority who believes in its own supremacy, and the individualists/decentralizers who believe they can play david vs the Majority. once the Majority invents a word with the same name as yours, you're fucked, and every Majoritarian will claim ownership on your word's spelling, backed up with the astounding Majority of Majoritarians. Five Billion Lemmings Can't Be Wrong.
here we go... damm...
Just because a person has never had the desire to crack does not make them a dork. (Many would in fact argue exactly the opposite, that its those of you who need illegal activities to feel fufilled who are the 'dorks'!)
There are many, many hackers who expend their time and skill in constructive programming pursuits: making more efficient utilities, writing games, sending useful scripts to their friends...
Personally I'm relatively proficient in at least six programming languages, but have just never had the desire to crack or engage in cracking. Perhaps I'm too tied up in this, or really am more oddball than I believe, but I'll need to see some evidence before I accept that.
I'll agree pretty much wholesale with your last paragraph, but I don't see how that applies to the issue at hand, which is that a perfectly reasonable word denoting dedication and expertise is being corrupted with negative connotations, and we don't have a good replacement. The only options I see are:
1) create a new word without the negative connotations to replace the traditional use of 'hacker'.
2) fight these negative connotations as they are being established (what many here are trying (somewhat futilely) to do).
Our definition is more accurate because some of the smartest people around have been using it since the seventies (or earlier?)
But humanity will make the wrong choice, as always.
That's the contrary. Only on slashdot.org we see crackers labeling themselves as "hackers". We should probably label them "slashdot kiddies", for they have better coding/computer ability than the average "script kiddie", but act very similary (they find fun to crack computers belong to others).
You need to get over it already, HACKERS have never been referred to as crackers, except by you.
I'm not the original poster and anyway the answer is a big "No!".
I'm going to explain it one more time. Hackers are explorers, fiddlers, we like knowing what makes things tick, whether that be a computer, a phone system, a network, a squirrel's nervous system, etc...
I'm going to explain it one more time. Only a yound adolescent that watched too much TV, or a grown-up with a sick mentality, would spent his time cracking systems belonging to others. I am too curious about the design and internals of the OSes, machines, programs, ..., but I explore them on my own machine. Of course! It is something completly surrealistic, to watch people seriously telling that they crack, because of their curiosity. That's simply not true. They crack, because they love to invade some kind of privacy of others, and because of TV. But what would you think of someone that would dismantle your car on the grounds that "he is curious about cars internal" ? Probably that he is on crack (see, a bad justification for the "crackers"). "Why the FUCKING HELL aren't you dismantling your car and explore his internals ?" will you probably shout. And you'll be right. And people despising intruders are similary right. And no amount of slashdot kiddies will change this fundemental fact.
The meanings for the words Hacker, and Cracker do seem to have changed over the years. I used to call myself a cracker because I cracked the copy protection on various programs. This required a great deal of programming skill, and a thorough understanding of the operating system, and some hardware.
I also did alot of coding, and never tried to hack into anything.
Of course, this was 10+ years ago.. The word doesn't mean anything, its the respect associated with the word that means something..
I read a lot on this site about people "incorrectly" calling computer criminals hackers. But remember, languages change over time, for no reason other than everyone's using the words in a different way. Remember when "gay" meant "happy?"
So my question is, How long before we give up, accept that "hacker" means "computer criminal" in the dialect used by the rest of the country, and start using that dialect ourselves to communicate more clearly?
"I want to get to know the hacker community better," he said. "These
people are America's future."
Is this because so many of them are kids or because they "know" computers? I do know that the job I currently do (and probably 74%) of IT jobs will be done by normal employees who have lots of comp. exp. in another 10 years or so.
Most of it just isn't that difficult.
Anyway, just because it's now obligatory, I consider myself a hacker, in the sense that I don't know how to be subtle and hack the crap out of code as if with a dull ax. Crackers are silly white folks.
+&x