What Is A Hacker?

[harrison858 0]

Wow... I never knew that hackers had such a diferent term from what I thought it would be. The term always confused me, because I always thought there were good hackers and bad(evil) hackers, if I might say.The Media comes in, and talks about hackers stealing credit card numbers, passwords, PINS, etc. Which confused me.Then Some people say "Im a hacker", and why would you let other people know? Which confused me even more.And then some software developers give hacks that fix the bugs, and im like... that dosent make any sense.But now that you have clarified what a hacker and what a cracker is, I must say, thank you, and: the media lies ><But now, according to me:- Hackers are always smart. Crackers are too.- Some of them choose to do good things, others seek to claim something for themselves and cause unwanted damage.- Some of them are smart, but not as smart as they think they are, and mess up, causing damage.

Edited October 29, 2008 by harrison858 (see edit history)

[Spyda 0]

What is a hacker?
Contrary to what you might think, and what the media and the Internet have told you, a hacker is not one who cracks a security scheme, or breaks into another's computer. These people are called crackers, and they should not be associated with hackers, who are a far different type of person. Hackers are those who adjust computers and its programs to their needs - Technological wizards, you might say.

Stereotype

It is wrong to stereotype hackers. For example, many hackers are stereotyped as Unsociable. However, this is not true. Just look at one of the greatest hackers in history, Linus Torvalds, creator of the popular operating system Linux. He has a wife, and several children. This shows that hackers should not be stereotyped.

Hacker Culture

The Jargon File is a very good resource of information about hacker culture. 1337 5p34k has been created by hackers, as a way to get around BBS censoring systems. Also, there are many symbols of the hacker culture - Tux, the Linux penguin, the BSD Daemon, and the Perl Camel stand out as examples.

I hope this got you a better understanding of what a hacker is. For more information, look to this wikipedia article.

I stereotype hakers because I don't see why people would would want to waste their time ruining other peoples work. But, I know a couple of them and they are pretty normal people. Some actually use their hacking abilities to find exploits in forum software to help that software be more secure. So I guess hackers aren't all bad

[Tran-Gate 0]

Wait....I don't know the word hacker anymore.....I used to usually only refer those hackers in games......lol.....I am confused on what hackers are.....

[networker 0]

I guess you can credit a lot of innovation to hackers.I mean wasn't Alexander Graham Bell a hacker of sorts?James Watt,the guy who invented the steam engine? If it wasn't for the inquisitive minds there never wouldhave been any advancement in technology.

Edited December 6, 2008 by networker (see edit history)

[Forte 0]

Hackers are many things, Their are people who say they are hackers usually meaning they are script kiddies.
To define a hacker I would say this.

1. White-Hat Hacker: These are ethical hackers. They work to improve system security.

2. Black-Hat Hacker: Unethical hackers who exploit systems for their personal use.

3. Grey-Hat Hacker: There are many arguments about these Grey-Hat hackers.
To define simply, they have good intentions, but they do some damage. For example hackers
who others hacks websites to notify the webmasters that, it has some vulnerabilities.
Even though their intention is good, they do some damage to the website.

Ethical hackers are security experts, Black-hat hacker is the dangerous one. But whomever the hacker may
be, definitely he has some great knowledge.

Why has this been copied over and over in this topic since xpress said it?

The original definition of a hacker is any person who had the time and took the effort to fool around with anything enough to open it. It didn't have to be computers, it could be locks, phones, clocks; and in fact, it didn't start out as computers (no term really ever does). Even if your expertise isn't on a computer, you could still be a hacker if you just like to take stuff apart to see how it works, or to modify it. (That's me )