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This article is about computer hacking. For other uses, see Hacker and Hacking.

In computing, hacker has several meanings:[1]

Today, mainstream usage mostly refers to computer criminals, due to the mass media usage of the word since the 1980s. This includes script kiddies, people breaking into computers using programs written by others, with very little knowledge about the way they work. In Hacker culture, a script kiddie (as opposed to " Speed kiddie " occasionally script bunny, skiddie, script kitty This usage is so much predominant in the general public that a large segment of it is unaware that different meanings also exist.

This article compares and contrasts the three meanings defined above. There are specific articles about each one of them at Hacker (computer security), Hacker (Free and Open Source Software), and Hacker (hobbyist), respectively. In common usage hacker is generic term for a computer criminal often with a specific specialty in computer intrusion See also Hacker In home computing a hacker is a person who heavily modifies the software or hardware of their computer system While the use of the word by hobbyist hackers is acknowledged by all three subcultures, and the computer security hackers accept all uses of the word, free software hackers consider the computer intrusion related usage incorrect, and refer to security breakers as “crackers”.

Contents

Hacker definition controversy

The terms hacker and hack are marked by contrasting positive and negative connotations. Computer programmers often use the words hacking and hacker to express admiration for the work of a skilled software developer (but may also use them in a negative sense to describe the production of inelegant kludges). A kludge (alternately kluge) is a clumsy or inelegant solution to a problem or difficulty Some frown upon using hacking as a synonym for security cracking -- in distinct contrast to the larger world, in which the word hacker is typically used to describe someone who "hacks into" a system by evading or disabling security measures. In common usage hacker is generic term for a computer criminal often with a specific specialty in computer intrusion

Controversy and ambiguity

While "hack" was originally more used as a verb for "messing about" with (e. g. "I hack around with computers"), the meaning of the term has shifted over the decades since it first came into use in a computer context. As usage has spread more widely, the primary meaning of newer users of the word has shifted to one which conflicts with the original primary emphasis.

Currently, "hacker" is used in two main ways, one pejorative and one complimentary. In popular usage and in the media, it most often refers to computer intruders or criminals, with associated pejorative connotations. (For example, "An Internet 'hacker' broke through state government security systems in March. ") In the computing community, the primary meaning is a complimentary description for a particularly brilliant programmer or technical expert. (For example, "Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux, is considered by some to be a genius hacker. Linus Benedict Torvalds ( ˈtuːrvalds born December 28 1969 in Helsinki, Finland) is a Finnish software engineer Linux is an operating system kernel used by a family of Unix-like Operating systems These are popularly termed Linux operating systems and ") A large segment of the technical community insist the latter is the "correct" usage of the word (see the Jargon File definition below). The Jargon File is a Glossary of hacker Slang. The original Jargon File was a collection of hacker slang from technical cultures such as the MIT AI

The mainstream media's current usage of the term may be traced back to the early 1980s (see History). "Popular press" redirects here note that the University of Wisconsin Press publishes under the imprint "The Popular Press" In Computing, hacker has several meanings A community of enthusiast Computer programmers and Systems designers originated in the 1960s When the term was introduced to wider society by the mainstream media in 1983, even those in the computer community referred to computer intrusion as "hacking", although not as the exclusive use of that word. In reaction to the increasing media use of the term exclusively with the criminal connotation, the computer community began to differentiate their terminology. Several alternative terms such as "black hat" and "cracker" were coined in an effort to distinguish between those performing criminal activities, and those whose activities were the legal ones referred to more frequently in the historical use of the term "hack". A black hat is the Villain or bad guy, especially in a western movie in which such a character would wear a black Hat in contrast to the In common usage hacker is generic term for a computer criminal often with a specific specialty in computer intrusion Hack has several meanings in the technology and computer science fields Analogous terms such as "white hats" and "gray hats" developed as a result. A white hat is the Hero or good guy, especially in computing slang where it refers to an Ethical hacker who focuses on securing and protecting A grey hat, in the hacking community refers to a skilled hacker who sometimes acts legally sometimes in good will and sometimes not However, since network news use of the term pertained primarily to the criminal activities despite this attempt by the technical community to preserve and distinguish the original meaning, the mainstream media and general public continue to describe computer criminals with all levels of technical sophistication as "hackers" and does not generally make use of the word in any of its non-criminal connotations.

As a result of this difference, the definition is the subject of heated controversy. The wider dominance of the pejorative connotation is resented by many who object to the term being taken from their cultural jargon and used negatively[5], including those who have historically preferred to self-identify as hackers. For Wikipedia jargon see WikipediaGlossary. For hacker slang see Jargon File. Many advocate using the more recent and nuanced alternate terms when describing criminals and others who negatively take advantage of security flaws in software and hardware. Others prefer to follow common popular usage, arguing that the positive form is confusing and unlikely to become widespread in the general public. A minority still stubbornly use the term in both original senses despite the controversy, leaving context to clarify (or leave ambiguous) which meaning is intended. It is noteworthy, however, that the positive definition of hacker was widely used as the predominant form for many years before the negative definition was popularized.

"Hacker" can therefore be seen as a shibboleth, identifying those who use the technically-oriented sense (as opposed to the exclusively intrusion-oriented sense) as members of the computing community. Shibboleth (ˈʃɪbəlɛθ or ˈʃɪbələθ is any practice which is indicative of one's social or regional origin

A possible middle ground position has been suggested, based on the observation that "hacking" describes a collection of skills which are used by hackers of both descriptions for differing reasons. The analogy is made to locksmithing, specifically picking locks, which — aside from its being a skill with a fairly high tropism to 'classic' hacking — is a skill which can be used for good or evil. A tropism (from Greek tropos, to turn is a biological Phenomenon, indicating growth or turning movement of a biological Organism, usually a plant The primary weakness of this analogy is the inclusion of script kiddies in the popular usage of "hacker", despite the lack of an underlying skill and knowledge base. In Hacker culture, a script kiddie (as opposed to " Speed kiddie " occasionally script bunny, skiddie, script kitty

History

A timeline of the noun "hack" and etymologically related terms as they evolved in historical English:

Types of hackers

The types of hackers are usually named by the hackers own slang (also known as jargon). Generally hackers can be divided into three classes (also groups or even schools)

White Hat Hacker

A white hat hacker, also rendered as whitehat or white-hat, is in the realm of information technology, a person who is ethically opposed to the abuse of computer systems. Realizing that the Internet now represents human voices from all around the world makes the defense of its integrity an important pastime for many. A white hat generally focuses on securing IT systems, whereas a black hat (the opposite) would like to break into them but this is a simplification. A black hat will wish to secure his own machine, and a white hat might need to break into a black hat's machine in the course of an investigation. What exactly differentiates white hats and black hats is open to interpretation, but white hats tend to cite altruistic motivations.

Grey or Brown Hat Hacker

A hacker of this type is a skilled hacker who sometimes acts legally and in good will and sometimes not. They are a hybrid between white and black hat hackers. They hack for no personal gain and do not have malicious intentions, but occasionally may or may not commit crimes in their actions. There is no distinction between grey and brown for hackers in this category.

Black Hat Hacker

A black hat or black-hat hacker is a malicious or criminal person whose correct label is "cracker". The term hacker is also commonly used as a synonym for "black hat hacker". However, in computer jargon, the meaning of "hacker" is much more broad. Usually a Black Hat refers to a person that maintains knowledge of the vulnerabilities and exploits they find as secret for private advantage, not revealing them either to the general public or manufacturer for correction. Many Black Hats promote individual freedom and accessibility over privacy and security. Black Hats may seek to expand holes in systems; any attempts made to patch software are generally to prevent others from also compromising a system they have already obtained secure control over. A Black Hat cracker may have access to 0-day exploits (private software that exploits security vulnerabilities; 0-day exploits have not been distributed to the public). In the most extreme cases, Black Hats may work to cause damage maliciously, and/or make threats to do so for blackmail purposes.

Contemporary Use

The modern, computer-related use of the term is considered likely rooted in the goings on at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the 1960s, long before computers became common; the word "hack" was local slang which had a large number of related meanings. Hack has several meanings in the technology and computer science fields Slang is the use of highly informal Words and expressions that are not considered standard in the speaker's Dialect or Language. One was a simple, but often inelegant, solution to a problem. It also meant any clever prank perpetrated by MIT students; logically the perpetrator was a hacker. To this day the terms hack and hacker are used in several ways at MIT, without necessarily referring to computers. When MIT students surreptitiously put a fake police car atop the dome on MIT's Building 10, that was a hack, and the students involved were therefore hackers. Another type of hacker — one who explores undocumented or unauthorized areas in buildings — is now called a reality hacker or urban spelunker. Urban exploration (often shortened as urbex or UE) is the examination of the normally unseen or off-limits parts of urban areas or industrial facilities

The term was fused with computers when members of the Tech Model Railroad Club started working with a Digital Equipment Corporation PDP-1 computer and applied local model railroad slang to computers. The Tech Model Railroad Club (TMRC is a student organization at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT and one of the most famous model railroad clubs in the Digital Equipment Corporation was a pioneering American company in the Computer industry The PDP-1 ( P rogrammed D ata P rocessor- 1) was the first Computer in Digital Equipment Corporation 's

The earliest known use of the term in this manner is from the 20 November 1963 issue of The Tech, the student paper of MIT:

Many telephone services have been curtailed because of so-called hackers, according to Prof. Events 284 - Diocletian was chosen as Roman Emperor. 762 - Bögü Khan of the Uyghurs, Year 1963 ( MCMLXIII) was a Common year starting on Tuesday (link will display full calendar of the Gregorian calendar. Carlton Tucker, administrator of the Institute phone system. […] The hackers have accomplished such things as tying up all the tie-lines between Harvard and MIT, or making long-distance calls by charging them to a local radar installation. One method involved connecting the PDP-1 computer to the phone system to search the lines until a dial tone, indicating an outside line, was found. […] Because of the 'hacking', the majority of the MIT phones are 'trapped'.

Originally, the term "hack" was applied almost exclusively to programming or electrical engineering, but it has come to be used in some circles for almost any type of clever circumvention, in phrases such as "hack the media", "hack your brain" and "hack your reputation". Electrical engineering, sometimes referred to as electrical and electronic engineering, is a field of Engineering that deals with the study and application of

Negative usage in engineering

Another meaning of the term "hack", similar to kludge and distinct from both the positive and security-related meanings discussed above, derives from the everyday English sense "to cut or shape by or as if by crude or ruthless strokes" [Merriam-Webster]. A kludge (alternately kluge) is a clumsy or inelegant solution to a problem or difficulty In other words to "hack" at an original creation, as if with an axe, is to force-fit it into being usable for a task not intended by the original creator, and a "hacker" would be someone who does this habitually. (The original creator and the hacker may be the same person. )

This usage is common in both programming (as demonstrated by a Google code search for "HACK" [3]) and engineering. In programming, hacking in this sense appears to be tolerated and seen as a necessary compromise in many situations. In non-software engineering, the culture is less tolerant of unmaintainable solutions, even when intended to be temporary, and describing someone as a "hacker" might imply that they lack professionalism. In this sense, the term has no real positive connotations, except for the idea that the hacker is capable of doing modifications that allow a system to work in the short term, and so has some sort of marketable skills. There is always, however, the understanding that a more skillful, or technical, logician could have produced successful modifications that would not be considered a "hack-job".

The definition is similar to other, non-computer based, uses of the term "hack-job". For instance, a professional modification of a production sports car into a racing machine would not be considered a hack-job, but a cobbled together backyard mechanic's result could be. Even though the outcome of a race of the two machines could not be assumed, a quick inspection would instantly reveal the difference in the level of professionalism of the designers.

Hacker Ethic

Main article: Hacker Ethic

Many "white hat" hackers adhere to hacker ethics and shared values that were common among the early hackers at MIT and the Homebrew Computer Club based in Silicon Valley. Hacker ethic refers to the values and philosophy that are standard in the hacker community The Homebrew Computer Club was an early Computer Hobbyist club in Silicon Valley, which met (under that name from March 1975 to roughly 1977 For the valley nicknamed "Silicone Valley" see San Fernando Valley. Hacker ethics are founded upon principles of openness, sharing, and the Hands-On Imperative. All of these principles cumulate to the improvement of software, hardware, and ideally, the world.

Computer security hackers

Main article: Hacker (computer security)
Bruce Sterling, author of The Hacker Crackdown
Bruce Sterling, author of The Hacker Crackdown

In computer security, a hacker is someone who focuses on security mechanisms of computer and network systems. In common usage hacker is generic term for a computer criminal often with a specific specialty in computer intrusion Michael Bruce Sterling (born April 14, 1954) is an American Science fiction author, best known for his novels and his seminal work on the Mirrorshades The Hacker Crackdown Law and Disorder on the Electronic Frontier (ISBN 0-553-56370-X is a nonfiction book written by Bruce Sterling in 1992 While including those who endeavor to strengthen such mechanisms, it is more often used by the mass media and popular culture to refer to those who seek access despite these security measures. "Popular press" redirects here note that the University of Wisconsin Press publishes under the imprint "The Popular Press" That is, the media portrays the 'hacker' as a villain. Nevertheless, parts of the subculture see their aim in correcting security problems and use the word in a positive sense. They operate under a code of the Hacker Ethic, which acknowledges that breaking into other people's computers is bad, but that discovering and exploiting security mechanisms and breaking into computers is still an interesting activity that can be done ethically and legally. A white hat is the Hero or good guy, especially in computing slang where it refers to an Ethical hacker who focuses on securing and protecting Accordingly, the term bears strong connotations that are favorable or pejorative, depending on the context.

The subculture around such hackers is termed network hacker subculture, hacker scene or computer underground. It initially developed in the context of phreaking during the 1960s and the microcomputer BBS scene of the 1980s. Phreaking is a Slang term coined to describe the activity of a Subculture of people who study experiment with or explore telecommunication systems like equipment A Bulletin Board System, or BBS, is a Computer system running software that allows users to connect and login to It is implicated with 2600: The Hacker Quarterly and the alt.2600 newsgroup. 2600 The Hacker Quarterly is a quarterly American publication that specializes in publishing technical information on a variety of subjects including telephone 2600 The Hacker Quarterly is a quarterly American publication that specializes in publishing technical information on a variety of subjects including telephone

By 1983, hacking in the sense of breaking computer security had already been in use as computer jargon,[12] but there was no public awareness about such activities. [13] However, the release of the movie WarGames that year raised the public belief that computer security hackers (especially teenagers) could be a threat to national security. WarGames is a 1983 drama / Thriller film written by Lawrence Lasker and Walter F This concern became real when a gang of teenage hackers in Milwaukee, Wisconsin known as The 414s broke into computer systems throughout the United States and Canada, including those of Los Alamos National Laboratory, Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and Security Pacific Bank. A black hat is the Villain or bad guy, especially in a western movie in which such a character would wear a black Hat in contrast to the The 414s gained fame in the early 1980s as a group of friends and Computer hackers who broke into dozens of high-profile computer systems including ones at Los The United States of America —commonly referred to as the Country to "Dominion of Canada" or "Canadian Federation" or anything else please read the Talk Page Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL (previously known at various times as Site Y, Los Alamos Laboratory, and Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory) is a Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC is a Cancer treatment and research institution founded in 1884 as the New York Cancer Hospital. Security Pacific National Bank (SPNB was a large US Bank headquartered in Los Angeles, California. The case quickly grew media attention,[14][8] and 17-year-old Neal Patrick emerged as the spokesman for the gang, including a cover story in Newsweek entitled "Beware: Hackers at play", with Patrick's photograph on the cover. Newsweek is an American weekly Newsmagazine published in New York City. [9] The Newsweek article appears to be the first use of the word hacker by the mainstream media in the pejorative sense.

As a result of news coverage, congressman Dan Glickman called for an investigation and new laws about computer hacking. Daniel Robert "Dan" Glickman (born November 24, 1944) served as the United States Secretary of Agriculture from 1995 until 2001 prior to [15] Neal Patrick testified before the U.S. House of Representatives on September 26, 1983 about the dangers of computer hacking, and six bills concerning computer crime were introduced in the House that year. The United States House of Representatives is one of the two chambers of the United States Congress; the other is the Senate. Events 46 BC - Julius Caesar dedicates a Year 1983 ( MCMLXXXIII) was a Common year starting on Saturday (link displays the 1983 Gregorian calendar) [16] As a result of these laws against computer criminality, white hat, grey hat and black hat hackers try to distinguish themselves from each other, depending on the legality of their activities. A white hat is the Hero or good guy, especially in computing slang where it refers to an Ethical hacker who focuses on securing and protecting A grey hat, in the hacking community refers to a skilled hacker who sometimes acts legally sometimes in good will and sometimes not A black hat is the Villain or bad guy, especially in a western movie in which such a character would wear a black Hat in contrast to the

Free and open source software hackers

Main article: Hacker (free and open source software)

The computer security use is contrasted by the different understanding of hacker as a person who follows a spirit of playful cleverness and loves programming. It is found in an originally academic movement unrelated to computer security and most visibly associated with free software and open source. Free software or software libre is Software that can be used studied and modified without restriction and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified Open source is a development methodology which offers practical accessibility to a product's source (goods and knowledge It also has a hacker ethic, based on the idea that writing software and sharing the result is a good idea, but only on a voluntary basis, and that information should be free, but that it's not up to the hacker to make it free by breaking into private computer systems. Hacker ethic refers to the values and philosophy that are standard in the hacker community Academic hackers disassociate from the mass media's pejorative use of the word 'hacker' referring to computer security, and usually prefer the term 'cracker' for that meaning.

In the this hacker culture, a computer hacker is a person who enjoys designing software and building programs with a sense for aesthetics and playful cleverness. The term hack in this sense can be traced back to "describe the elaborate college pranks that. . . students would regularly devise" (Levy, 1984 p. 10). To be considered a 'hack' was an honour among like-minded peers as "to qualify as a hack, the feat must be imbued with innovation, style and technical virtuosity" (levy, 1984 p. 10)

According to Eric S. Raymond,[17] the Open source and Free Software hacker subculture developed in the 1960s among ‘academic hackers’[18] working on early minicomputers in computer science environments in the United States. Eric Steven Raymond (born December 4 1957 often referred to as ESR, is a Computer programmer, author and Open source software advocate A minicomputer (colloquially mini) is a class of multi-user Computers that lies in the middle range of the computing spectrum in between the largest Multi-user Computer science (or computing science) is the study and the Science of the theoretical foundations of Information and Computation and their After 1969 it fused with the technical culture of the pioneers of the Arpanet. The ARPANET ( Advanced Research Projects Agency Network) developed by ARPA of the United States Department of Defense, was the world's first operational The PDP-10 machine AI at MIT, which was running the ITS operating system and was connected to the Arpanet, provided an early hacker meeting point. The PDP-10 was a Mainframe computer manufactured by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC from the late 1960s on the name stands for "Programmed Data Processor ITS, the Incompatible Timesharing System (named in comparison with the Compatible Time-Sharing System also in use at MIT was an early revolutionary and influential After 1980 the subculture coalesced with the culture of Unix, and after 1987 with elements of the early microcomputer hobbyists that themselves had connections to radio amateurs in the 1920s. Unix (officially trademarked as UNIX, sometimes also written as Unix with Small caps) is a computer microcomputer is a Computer with a Microprocessor as its Central processing unit. Since the mid-1990s, it has been largely coincident with what is now called the free software and open source movement. The free software movement (also known as open source movement, free and open source software movement and abbreviated FSM OSM or FOSSM) is a relatively The Open Source Initiative is an organization dedicated to promoting Open-source software.

Many programmers have been labeled "great hackers,"[19] but the specifics of who that label applies to is a matter of opinion. Certainly major contributors to computer science such as Edsger Dijkstra and Donald Knuth, as well as the inventors of popular software such as Linus Torvalds (Linux), and Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson (the C programming language) are likely to be included in any such list; see also List of programmers. Computer science (or computing science) is the study and the Science of the theoretical foundations of Information and Computation and their Edsger Wybe Dijkstra ( May 11, 1930 &ndash August 6, 2002; ˈɛtsxər ˈwibə ˈdɛɪkstra was a Dutch computer scientist Donald Ervin Knuth (kəˈnuːθ (born 10 January 1938) is a renowned computer scientist and Professor Emeritus of the Art of Computer Linus Benedict Torvalds ( ˈtuːrvalds born December 28 1969 in Helsinki, Finland) is a Finnish software engineer Linux (commonly pronounced ˈlɪnəks Dennis MacAlistair Ritchie (born September 9, 1941) is an American computer scientist notable for his influence on C and other Programming Kenneth Lane Thompson (born February 4 1943) commonly referred to as Ken Thompson (or simply tags please moot on the talk page first! --> In Computing, C is a general-purpose cross-platform block structured This is a list of Programmers notable for their contributions to software either as original author or architect or for later additions People primarily known for their contributions to the consciousness of the academic hacker culture include Richard Stallman, the founder of the free software movement and the GNU project, president of the Free Software Foundation and author of the famous Emacs text editor as well as the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC), and Eric S. Raymond, one of the founders of the Open Source Initiative and writer of the famous text The Cathedral and the Bazaar and many other essays, maintainer of the Jargon File (which was previously maintained by Guy L. Steele, Jr.). Richard Matthew Stallman (born March 16 1953 often abbreviated " rms " is an American software freedom activist The GNU Project is a Free software, Mass collaboration project announced in 1983 by Richard Stallman. The Free Software Foundation ( FSF) is a Non-profit corporation founded by Richard Stallman on 4 October 1985 to support the Free software movement Emacs is a class of feature-rich Text editors usually characterized by their extensibility The GNU Compiler Collection (usually shortened to GCC) is a set of Compilers produced for various Programming languages by the GNU Project Eric Steven Raymond (born December 4 1957 often referred to as ESR, is a Computer programmer, author and Open source software advocate The Open Source Initiative is an organization dedicated to promoting Open-source software. The Cathedral and the Bazaar (abbreviated CatB) is an essay by Eric S The Jargon File is a Glossary of hacker Slang. The original Jargon File was a collection of hacker slang from technical cultures such as the MIT AI Guy Lewis Steele Jr, (ˈstiːl as in steel) also known as "The Great Quux" and GLS (glis is an American Computer scientist

Within the academic hacker culture, the term hacker is also used for a programmer who reaches a goal by employing a series of modifications to extend existing code or resources. In Computer science, source code (commonly just source or code) is any sequence of statements or declarations written in some Human-readable In this sense, it can have a negative connotation of using kludges to accomplish programming tasks that are ugly, inelegant, and inefficient. A kludge (alternately kluge) is a clumsy or inelegant solution to a problem or difficulty This derogatory form of the noun "hack" is even used among users of the positive sense of "hacker" (some argue that it should not be, due to this negative meaning; others argue that some kludges can, for all their ugliness and imperfection, still have "hack value"). Hack has several meanings in the technology and computer science fields In a very universal sense, hacker also means someone who makes things work beyond perceived limits in a clever way in general. [20] That is, people who apply the creative attitude of software hackers in fields other than computing. This includes even activities that predate computer hacking, for example reality hackers. [21] More recent examples of this usage are wetware hackers and media hackers. A wetware hacker is one who experiments with biological materials to advance knowledge and does so in a spirit of creative improvisation Media hacking refers to the usage of various Electronic media in an innovative or otherwise abnormal fashion for the purpose of conveying a message to as large a number of people According to the Jargon File the word hacker was used in a similar meaning among radio amateurs already in the 1950s. [22]

The culture sometimes uses jargon which is "incomprehensible to outsiders"[23]. Examples are 'losing' "when a piece of equipment is not working"[23] and 'munged' "when a piece of equipment is ruined"[23].

Home computer hackers

Main article: Hacker (hobbyist)

In a third meaning, hacker refers to computer hobbyists who push the limits of their software or hardware. See also Hacker In home computing a hacker is a person who heavily modifies the software or hardware of their computer system The home computer hacking subculture relates to the hobbyist home computing of the late 1970s, beginning with the availability of MITS Altair. The MITS Altair 8800 was a Microcomputer design from 1975 based on the Intel 8080 CPU and sold as a mail-order kit through advertisements in An influential organization was the Homebrew Computer Club. The Homebrew Computer Club was an early Computer Hobbyist club in Silicon Valley, which met (under that name from March 1975 to roughly 1977

The areas that did not fit together with the academic hacker subculture focus mainly on commercial computer and video games, software cracking and exceptional computer programming (demo scene). ROM hacking is Software cracking is the modification of Software to remove protection methods Copy prevention, trial/demo version serial number hardware key CD check The demoscene is a Computer art Subculture that specializes in producing demos, which are non-interactive audio-visual presentations that run in Also of interest to some members of this group is the modification of computer hardware and other electronic devices, see modding. Modding is a Slang expression that is derived from the verb " modify "

Overlaps and differences

The main basic difference between academic and computer security hackers is their mostly separate historical origin and development. However, the Jargon File reports that considerable overlap existed for the early phreaking at the beginning of the 1970s. An article from MIT's student paper The Tech used the term hacker in this context already in 1963 in its pejorative meaning for someone messing with the phone system. [2] The overlap quickly started to break when people joined in the activity who did it in a less responsible way. [24] This was the case after the publication of an article exposing the activities of Draper and Engressias.

According to Raymond, academic hackers usually work openly and use their real name, while computer security hackers prefer secretive groups and identity-concealing aliases. [25] Also, their activities in practice are largely distinct. The former focus on creating new and improving existing infrastructure (especially the software environment they work with), while the latter primarily and strongly emphasize the general act of circumvention of security measures, with the effective use of the knowledge (which can be to report and help fixing the security bugs, or exploitation for criminal purpose) being only rather secondary. The most visible difference in these views was in the design of the MIT hackers' Incompatible Timesharing System, which deliberately didn't have any security measures. ITS, the Incompatible Timesharing System (named in comparison with the Compatible Time-Sharing System also in use at MIT was an early revolutionary and influential

There are some subtle overlaps, however, since basic knowledge about computer security is also common within the academic hacker community. For example, Ken Thompson noted during his 1983 Turing Award lecture that it is possible to add code to the UNIX "login" command that would accept either the intended encrypted password or a particular known password, allowing a back door into the system with the latter password. The A M Turing Award is given annually by the Association for Computing Machinery to "an individual selected for contributions of a technical nature made to the computing Unix (officially trademarked as UNIX, sometimes also written as Unix with Small caps) is a computer In computing a password is a Word or string of characters that is entered often along with a user name, in modern times usually into a computer system He named his invention the "Trojan horse. This article refers to a form of Malware in computing terminology " Furthermore, Thompson argued, the C compiler itself could be modified to automatically generate the rogue code, to make detecting the modification even harder. A compiler is a Computer program (or set of programs that translates text written in a computer language (the source language) into another Because the compiler is itself a program generated from a compiler, the Trojan horse could also be automatically installed in a new compiler program, without any detectable modification to the source of the new compiler. However, Thompson disassociated himself strictly from the computer security hackers: "I would like to criticize the press in its handling of the 'hackers,' the 414 gang, the Dalton gang, etc. The acts performed by these kids are vandalism at best and probably trespass and theft at worst. . . . I have watched kids testifying before Congress. It is clear that they are completely unaware of the seriousness of their acts. " [26]

The academic hacker community sees secondary circumvention of security mechanisms as legitimate if it is done to get practical barriers out of the way for doing actual work. In special forms, that can even be an expression of playful cleverness. [27] However, the systematic and primary engagement in such activities is not one of the actual interests of the academic hacker subculture and it doesn't have significance in its actual activities, either. [25] A further difference is that, historically, academic hackers were working at academic institutions and used the computing environment there. In contrast, the prototypical computer security hacker had access exclusively to a home computer and a modem. However since the mid-1990s, with home computers that could run Unix-like operating systems and with inexpensive internet home access being available for the first time, many people from outside of the academic world started to take part in the academic hacking subculture.

Since the mid-1980s, there are some overlaps in ideas and members with the computer security hacking community. The most prominent case is Robert T. Morris, who was a user of MIT-AI, yet wrote the Morris worm. The Morris worm or Internet worm was one of the first Computer worms distributed via the Internet; it is considered the first worm and was certainly the The Jargon File hence calls him "a true hacker who blundered". [28] Nevertheless, members of the academic subculture have a tendency to look down on and disassociate from these overlaps. They commonly refer disparagingly to people in the computer security subculture as crackers, and refuse to accept any definition of hacker that encompasses such activities. The computer security hacking subculture on the other hand tends not to distinguish between the two subcultures as harshly, instead acknowledging that they have much in common including many members, political and social goals, and a love of learning about technology. They restrict the use of the term cracker to their categories of script kiddies and black hat hackers instead. In Hacker culture, a script kiddie (as opposed to " Speed kiddie " occasionally script bunny, skiddie, script kitty A black hat is the Villain or bad guy, especially in a western movie in which such a character would wear a black Hat in contrast to the

All three subcultures have relations to hardware modifications. In the early days of network hacking, phreaks were building blue boxes and various variants. An early Phreaking tool the blue box is an electronic device that simulates a Telephone operator 's dialing console The academic hacker culture has stories about several hardware hacks in its folklore, such as a mysterious 'magic' switch attached to a PDP-10 computer in MIT's AI lab, that, when turned off, crashed the computer. [29] The early hobbyist hackers built their home computers themselves, from construction kits. However, all these activities have died out during the 1980s, when the phone network switched to digitally controlled switchboards, causing network hacking to shift to dialing remote computers with modems, when pre-assembled inexpensive home computers were available, and when academic institutions started to give individual mass-produced workstation computers to scientists instead of using a central timesharing system. The only kind of widespread hardware modification nowadays is case modding. Case modification (commonly referred to as case modding) is the modification of a computer chassis (often just referred to as the case) or a

An encounter of the academic and the computer security hacker subculture occurred at the end of the 1980s, when a group of computer security hackers, sympathizing with the Chaos Computer Club (who disclaimed any knowledge in these activities), broke into computers of American military organizations and academic institutions. They sold data from these machines to the Soviet secret service, one of them in order to fund his drug addiction. The case could be solved when Clifford Stoll, a scientist working as a system administrator, found ways to log the attacks and to trace them back (with the help of many others). Clifford Stoll (or Cliff Stoll) is a US Astronomer, Computer expert and Author. 23, a German film adaption with fictional elements, shows the events from the attackers' perspective. 23 is a 1998 German movie about a young hacker Karl Koch, who supposedly committed suicide on May 23, 1989. Stoll described the case in his book The Cuckoo's Egg and in the TV documentary The KGB, the Computer, and Me from the other perspective. The Cuckoo's Egg Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage is a 1990 book written by Clifford Stoll. According to Eric S. Raymond, it "nicely illustrates the difference between 'hacker' and 'cracker'. Stoll's portrait of himself, his lady Martha, and his friends at Berkeley and on the Internet paints a marvelously vivid picture of how hackers and the people around them like to live and how they think. "[30]

See also

References

  1. ^ webzone.k3.mah.se/k3jolo/HackerCultures/origins.htm. Hack has several meanings in the technology and computer science fields This is a timeline-style look at how Free software has evolved and existed from its inception This is a timeline of computer security hacker history. Hacking and System cracking appeared with the first electronic Computers Below are some Hacker ethic refers to the values and philosophy that are standard in the hacker community
  2. ^ a b Fred Shapiro: Antedating of "Hacker". American Dialect Society Mailing List (13. June 2003)
  3. ^ Levy, part 2
  4. ^ Levy, part 3
  5. ^ TMRC site, Archive.org cache
  6. ^ A Glossary of Railroad Terms, American Speech, volume 18 number 3 (October 1943), pp. 161-170; cited page 163.
  7. ^ The Origin of "Hacker", <http://imranontech.com/2008/04/01/the-origin-of-hacker/> 
  8. ^ a b Elmer-DeWitt, Philip (August 29, 1983), “The 414 Gang Strikes Again”, Time magazine: p. Time (trademarked in capitals as TIME) is a weekly American Newsmagazine, similar to Newsweek and 75, <http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,949797,00.html> 
  9. ^ a b “Beware: Hackers at play”, Newsweek: pp. Newsweek is an American weekly Newsmagazine published in New York City. 42-46,48, September 5, 1983 
  10. ^ j. . . @uvacs. UUCP (Mon, 19-Sep-83 13:50:25 EDT). "for hack ( er ) s who want to complain to CBS". net.followup net.misc, net.followup. (Web link).
  11. ^ David Bailey, "Attacks on Computers: Congressional Hearings and Pending Legislation," sp, p. 180, 1984 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy, 1984.
  12. ^ See the 1981 version of the Jargon File, entry "hacker", last meaning.
  13. ^ (October 16, 2002). "Computer hacking: Where did it begin and how did it grow?". . WindowSecurity. com
  14. ^ Detroit Free Press, September 27, 1983 
  15. ^ Timeline: The U.S. Government and Cybersecurity. The Detroit Free Press is the largest daily Newspaper in Detroit, Michigan, USA. Washington Post (2002). Retrieved on 2006-04-14. Year 2006 ( MMVI) was a Common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. Events 43 BC - Battle of Forum Gallorum: Mark Antony, besieging Julius Caesar 's assassin Decimus Junius Brutus in
  16. ^ David Bailey, "Attacks on Computers: Congressional Hearings and Pending Legislation," sp, p. 180, 1984 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy, 1984.
  17. ^ Eric S. Raymond: A Brief History of Hackerdom (2000)
  18. ^ www.faqs.org/docs/artu/ch20s06.html.
  19. ^ Graham, Paul (2004). Paul Graham (born 1964 is a Programmer, Venture capitalist and Essayist, known for his work on Lisp. Great Hackers.
  20. ^ How To Become A Hacker
  21. ^ See for example the MIT Gallery of Hacks
  22. ^ hacker
  23. ^ a b c Levy, Steven [1984] (2001). Steven Levy (born 1951 is an American Journalist who has written several books on computers technology Cryptography, the Internet cybersecurity Hackers: Heroes of the Compuer Revolution. Penguin Books, 9. ISBN 0141000511.  
  24. ^ phreaking
  25. ^ a b cracker
  26. ^ Thompson, Ken (August 1984). "Reflections on Trusting Trust". Communications of the ACM 27 (8).  
  27. ^ The Hacker Community and Ethics: An Interview with Richard M. Stallman - GNU Project - Free Software Foundation (FSF)
  28. ^ Part III. Appendices
  29. ^ A Story About ‘Magic'
  30. ^ Part III. Appendices

Related books

Computer security hacking books

Free Software/Open Source hacking books

External links

Computer security hacking weblinks

Free Software/Open Source hacking weblinks

Eric Steven Raymond (born December 4 1957 often referred to as ESR, is a Computer programmer, author and Open source software advocate Richard Matthew Stallman (born March 16 1953 often abbreviated " rms " is an American software freedom activist
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