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) .

Comments

Re:...does not smell the same

[Stephen Williams]

I wonder how long it'll be before nerd and geek become synonymous with say "gun toting lunatic"...

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

Hack or Crack?

[mong]

Yeah, sometime back, my beloved BBS was invaded for an hour or so by a small group of stupid sub-14yr Norwegian Kids - the ringleader claimed to be a "hacker". When I asked "what do you code", he got rather insulting and told me that I didn't know what I was on about.

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;

• So young, that they believe that the mainstream media definition is the correct one.
• 
  or
  
• So incompetent at "cracking" that they even get the terms wrong (this is often the case)
  

None the less, ill-informity is nothing new, and nothing to get too heated about.

Mong.

* Paul Madley ...Student, Artist, Techie - Geek *

Re:Hack or Crack?

[jarod]

The point? In my experience, people who wrongly call themselves "hackers" are either;

• So young, that they believe that the mainstream media definition is the correct one.
  or
• So incompetent at "cracking" that they even get the terms wrong (this is often the case)

In my experience the only people that I hear whine about some "big bad evil cracker guys" being called hacker are kids on Slashdot.

You need to get over it already, HACKERS have never been referred to as crackers, except by you.

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... Hacker does NOT necessarily mean programmer. Crackers defeated software copyright protection.

You've already lost

...does not smell the same

[Ethelred Unraed]

If the TV calls you a hacker, then you're a hacker.

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

Re:...does not smell the same

[Stephen Williams]

Many (most?) of /.ers would describe themselves quite proudly as "hackers"

I've given up, after explaining the difference 'twixt "hacker" and "cracker" one time too many. Nowadays, I call myself a "nerd".

Profiling on hacking/cracking at Defcon.

[jcostom]

The various articles have been pretty well done, but have left out some interesting things that were going on at Defcon.

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 problem as I see it:

[fable2112]

There isn't even agreement within the /. community and others like it about the precise differences between a "hacker" and a "cracker."

On other /. discussions I've seen several options:

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.

Interesting Quote

[opus]

From Marc Maiffret, cracker turned security professional:

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.
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