Microsoft Cracked

jhughes was the first to note an article on Microsoft being cracked that (ironically enough) appears on msnbc. Not any of their "Main" sites, but it happens. Its an odd story about a lovesick cracker. Very strange.

Comments

cracked?

[Trepidity]

Hmm. The never-ending hack/crack debate. One the one hand, using "cracked" is obviously inappropriate, since the term already had a meaning in computer security prior to its application in 1984 to people who break into computers. It has, for as long as anybody remembers, described people who break the copy protection of software. This usage far predates the usage cited in the Jargon File (which itself admits to the 1984 date).

On the other hand, the term "hacked" is obviously inappropriate in this case. This system intrusion was merely the work of a script kiddie, it appears, and hence is not any sort of hacking.

We need a verb that means "broken into by a script kiddie," so as to differentiate from "broken into by an intelligent security expert" (which I'll continue to call "hacked") and from "breaking the copy protection of" (which I'll continue to call "cracked."

I personally prefer to use the term "hax0red," which, helpfully, is what they often call it themselves, so it should not be hard to have this term adopted. This differentiates from mature, intelligent people, who use "hacked," to describe their work (whatever that work may be, be it kernel hacking or NT hacking) and the script kiddies who use 3l33t sp33k to describe their work. It also allows "hax0r d00d" to be used as a convenient synonym for "script kiddie."