Miscellaneous > The Lounge

When "Hackers" go bad

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lazygamer:
Perhaps this belongs in the lounge? Forgive me but I must. Sure there is a true difference between hackers and crackers to you guys, but explain this article.

http://www.msnbc.com/news/768843.asp?pne=msn

To pull all that off? Must be a bunch of 15-25 year old "l33t d00d" crackers eh? Maybe in mindset POSSIBLY, but to be this good they must either be super crackers or evil "hackers".(Using the defition presented at MSE forums).

I would quote the article here, but it's alot of rigamaroll to avoid quoting un-related crap on the screen. Sorry it's MSN related, but they do provide some good articles I must admit.

Some hackers(crackers) say they do what they do to prove to the world just how vunerable the internet REALLY is, and how a truly devious person could really f**k you up and choose not to get caught. These guys however have no anti-corporate "free your mind" message, as there somewhat similar message is presented at the corporations and not the general public.

voidmain:
Yes, this belongs in the "Lounge".  And I don't read anything coming from a site that starts with "MS".

lazygamer:
Well I was trying to point out the possibly "grey area" in the hacker/cracker thing.

http://www.science.uva.nl/~mes/jargon/h/hackerethic.html

 
quote:2. The belief that system-cracking for fun and exploration is ethically OK as long as the cracker commits no theft, vandalism, or breach of
confidentiality.
--- End quote ---


 
quote:Sense 2 is more controversial: some people consider the act of cracking itself to be unethical, like breaking and entering.  But
the belief that `ethical' cracking excludes destruction at least moderates the behavior of people who see themselves as `benign' crackers (see also samurai). On this view, it may be one of    the highest forms of hackerly courtesy to (a) break into a system, and then (b) explain to the sysop, preferably by email from a superuser account, exactly how it was done and how the hole    can be plugged -- acting as an unpaid (and unsolicited) tiger team.
--- End quote ---


http://www.science.uva.nl/~mes/jargon/h/hacker.html

 
quote:It also implies that the person described is seen to subscribe to some version of the hacker ethic (see hacker ethic).
--- End quote ---


http://www.science.uva.nl/~mes/jargon/s/samurai.html

 
quote:samurai: n.  A hacker who hires out for legal cracking jobs, snooping for factions in corporate political fights, lawyers pursuing privacy-rights and First Amendment cases, and other parties with legitimate reasons to need an electronic locksmith. In 1991, mainstream media reported the existence of a loose-knit culture of
samurai that meets electronically on BBS systems, mostly bright teenagers with personal micros; they have modeled themselves explicitly on the historical samurai of Japan and on the "net
cowboys" of William Gibson's cyberpunk novels.  Those interviewed claim to adhere to a rigid ethic of loyalty to their employers and
to disdain the vandalism and theft practiced by    criminal crackers as beneath them and contrary to the hacker ethic; some quote Miyamoto Musashi's "Book of Five Rings", a classic of historical samurai doctrine, in support of these principles.     See also sneaker, Stupids, social engineering,    cracker, hacker ethic, and Dark-side hacker.
--- End quote ---


What im getting at is that there is grey area. To say that "hackers=fine" and "crackers=immature, low skill wannabes" is ALL wrong. Sure crackers will tend(on average anyways) to be less skilled and intelligent then hackers, but you cannot, for a moment, reduce them to the abyssmal depths of the script kiddy category. Script kiddies are below crackers, if you can program your own tools or modify someone else's tools to a great degree you are a SOMEBODY. It doesn't matter whether you do horrible, immature, malicious things with it, you are still a something worth at least a little bit of respect as a rival or advesary.

Move this to the lounge if you will, but I feel what I have said should satisfy and enlighten both those who feels hackers=crackers and those who feel hackers=awesome and curious coders.

voidmain:
And if you read my previous post in this forum (in another thread) you will find that I stated this forum was intended for "programmers" and that the webmaster picked some bad synonyms for the word "programmer" when naming this forum.  The other meanings of hacker draw rif raf and this is not the intent of this forum.  This thread is a perfect example of what this forum is "not" about.

When the request was made for this forum it was to be for people to discuss programming languages (C, C++, Perl, PHP, JAVA, SQL, Python, Shell scripts/awk/sed/etc, Pascal, FORTRAN, PL, FORTH, ADA, PV-WAVE, IDL, SAS, CLIST, COBOL, SNOBOL, BASIC, TCL/TK, REXX, etc, etc, etc). It was not in any way requested to discuss such things about how to break into a system.  Those fuck heads should all be taken out back and shot!

[ July 29, 2002: Message edited by: VoidMain ]

lazygamer:
Lol ok, well then the name needs to be changed and this thread moved.

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