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Hackers

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 Hackers are the elite corps of computer designers and programmers. They like to see themselves as the wizards and warriors of tech. Designing software and inventing algorithms can involve dazzling intellection, and tinkering with them is as much fun as fiddling with engines. Hackers have their own culture, their own language and in the off-hours, they can turn their ingenuity to sparring with enemies on the Nets, or to the midnight stroll through systems you should not be able to enter, were you not so very clever. Dark-side hackers, or crackers, slip into systems for the smash-and-grab, but most hackers are in it for the virtuoso ingress. 

A  hacker is the one who:-
1.     Enjoys exploring the details of programmable systems and how to stretch their capabilities, as opposed to most users, who prefer to learn only the minimum necessary.
2.     Programs enthusiastically (even obsessively) or who enjoys programming rather than just theorizing about programming.
3.     Is good at programming quickly.
4.     Is an expert at a particular program or one who frequently does work using it or on it; as in `a Unix hacker'.
5.     Is an expert or enthusiast of any kind. One might be an astronomy hacker, for example.
6.     Enjoys the intellectual challenge of creatively overcoming or circumventing limitations.
7.     Is a malicious meddler who tries to discover sensitive information by poking around. Hence `password hacker', `network hacker'. The correct term for this sense is cracker.

The term "hacker" has come to be associated exclusively with breaking security. That isn't what it is at all, but hackers were willing to state their total contempt for security people, because security was one form of bureaucracy. First-generation hackers would break security because it was in the way of doing something useful. Now a lot of kids do it 'cause it's naughty. Though it is true that showing you can break security that's said to be unbreakable is a nice hack, the original hackers did not break security just to be naughty. They broke security if somebody had locked up a tool that you needed to use.

Hacking broadly refers to attempts to gain access to computers to which one does not possess authorization. The term "hackers" first came into use in the early 1960's when it was applied to a group of pioneering computer aficionados at MIT (Levy, 1984). Through the 1970s, a hacker was viewed as someone obsessed with understanding and mastering computer systems (Levy 1984). But, in the early 1980's, stimulated by the release of the movie "War Games" and the much publicized arrest of a "hacker gang" known as "The 414s", hackers were seen as young whiz-kids capable of breaking into corporate and government computer systems (Landreth 1985:34). The imprecise media definition and the lack of any clear understanding of what it means to be a hacker results in the mis-application of the label to all forms of computer malfeasance.

An elite hacker must experiment with command structures and explore the many files available in order to understand and effectively use the system. This is sometimes called "hacking around" or simply "hacking a system". This distinction is necessary because not all trespassers are necessarily skilled at hacking out passwords, and not all hackers retain interest in a system once the challenge of gaining entry has been surmounted. Further, passwords and accounts are often traded, allowing even an unskilled intruder to erroneously claim the title of "hacker". Although sometimes dodging the law, hackers possess an explicit ethic and their primary goal is knowledge acquisition.

A cracker is the one who does cracking. Cracking is the act of breaking into a computer system, often on a network. A cracker can be doing this for profit, unkindly, for some altruistic purpose or cause, or because the challenge is there. Some breaking-and-entering has been done ostensibly to point out weaknesses in a site's security system. Contrary to widespread myth, cracking does not usually involve some mysterious leap of hacker brilliance, but rather persistence and the persistent repetition of a handful of fairly well-known tricks that exploit common weaknesses in the security of target systems. Accordingly, most crackers are only mediocre hackers. These two terms should not be confused with each others and hackers generally condemn cracking.

It is somewhere at the interstices of the new generation of alienated young hackers (they sometimes refer to themselves as "cyberpunks") and the world of sometimes-organized crime that we locate the concept of the cracker. The term is, to some degree, an attempt by the now-established older-generation hackers to separate them from computer crime. The debate still rages as to what constitutes the difference between hacking and cracking. Some say that cracking represents any and all forms of rule-breaking and illegal activity using a computer. Others would define cracking only as particularly DESTRUCTIVE criminal acts. Still others would claim that the early hackers were EXPLICITLY anarchistic and that acts of willful destruction against "the system" have a place in the hacker ethos, and that therefore the term cracker is unnecessary and insulting.

The difference between hackers and crackers is that crackers use their skills to cause trouble, steal credit card numbers, release computer viruses, and crash machines. These type of people do illegal programming and they are called crackers because their activities involve cracking into computers. Many do feel that hackers and crackers are one in the same but hackers do more good then harm.

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Richard Reviewed this free essay on Jun:04:2008

Ya dude, hackers and crackers... no good. I like what you put together though.

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