Hacker

For other uses, see Hacker (disambiguation).

A hacker is a person using computers as objects of study rather than merely as instruments that facilitate work. The more specific definition of the term is subject to the hacker definition controversy; people from at least three major subcultures centered around different aspects of computers use the term to refer to themselves. By the mass media and in popular culture, it is most prominently used to mean a person who focuses on breaking security mechanisms of computer and network systems. This use is contrasted by the different understanding of the word as a person who, in a broad sense, adheres to a spirit of playful cleverness and, in a more specific sense, loves programming. It is found in an originally academic movement unrelated to computer security and most visibly associated with free software and open source. In a third meaning, the term refers to home computer hobbyists putting software or hardware of their system to the extreme.

Computer security hackers

Main article: Hacker (computer security)

In computer security, a hacker is a person who specializes in work with the security mechanisms for computer and network systems. 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. Accordingly, the term bears strong connotations that may be favorable or pejorative.

The subculture of computer security hackers is also termed network hacker subculture or computer underground and primarily developed in the context of phreaking during the 1960s and the microcomputer BBS scene of the 1980s. It is implicated with 2600: The Hacker Quarterly and the alt.2600 newsgroup.

Personalities

• Loyd Blankenship (also known as The Mentor) — Former LOD member. Author of The Conscience of a Hacker (Hacker's Manifesto).

• Eric Corley (also known as Emmanuel Goldstein) — Long standing publisher of 2600: The Hacker Quarterly and founder of the H.O.P.E. conferences. He has been part of the hacker community since the late '70s.

• CULT OF THE DEAD COW — A high profile hacker group that has both made news and been consulted by the media on numerous occasions.

• Brian Dorsett — Reverse-engineered the NDS satellite access smartcard known as the HU card. Currently imprisoned at Miami FDC. Records a daily podcast from prison titled Template:Dlw-inline

• Patrick K. Kroupa (also known as Lord Digital) — Former LOD member, co-founder of MindVox, author of Phantom Access programs, and MindVox: The Overture. Appears in over 20 books and hundreds of media and press articles.

• Gary McKinnon — accused of hacking into 97 United States military and NASA computers in 2001 and 2002 . [1]

• Kevin Mitnick — A former computer criminal who now (since his release from prison in 2000) speaks, consults, and authors books about social engineering and network security.

• Neal Patrick and The 414s — teenage hackers who gained brief but widespread media coverage in 1983.

• Steve Wozniak — Computer engineer who created the Apple I and Apple II series computers and, with Steve Jobs, founded Apple Computer (now Apple Inc.). He is known in the hacker community as "Woz" or "The other Steve." Woz came up with some ingenious hardware hacks to bring those machines to completion. Tales of his "blue box" phone calls are legendary.

Academic hackers

Main article: Hacker (academia)

In the academic hacker culture, a computer hacker is a person who enjoys designing software and building programs with a sense for aesthetics and playful cleverness. A hacker may also be a programmer who reaches a goal by employing a series of modifications to extend existing code or resources. In this sense, it can have a negative connotation of using kludges to accomplish programming tasks that are ugly, inelegant, and inefficient. 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").

The academic hacker subculture developed in the 1960s among hackers working on early minicomputers in academic computer science environments, especially at MIT. After 1969 it fused with the technical culture of the pioneers of the Internet, after 1980 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. Since the mid-1990s, it has been largely coincident with what is now called the free software movement and open source movement.

The main basic difference between academic and computer security hackers is that 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 in infrastructure, 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.

Since the mid-1980s, there are some overlaps in ideas and members with the computer security hacking community. Nevertheless, members of the academic subculture have a tendency to look down and disassociate from these overlaps. They commonly refer disparagingly to people in the second subculture as crackers, and refuse to accept any definition of hacker that encompasses such activities (see the Hacker definition controversy). 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 have more a tendency to categorize people into script kiddies and black hat (for which two groups the computer security centered subculture reserves the term cracker), grey hat and white hat hackers.

Many programmers have been labeled "great hackers," 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. 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.).

Within the academic hacker culture, the term hacker is also used for people who make things work beyond perceived limits in a clever way in general, for example reality hackers.

Hobby Hackers

Main article: Hacker (hobbyist)

The hobby hacking subculture relates to hobbyist home computing of the early 80s. The parts that didn't fuse with the academic hacker subculture focus mainly on commercial computer and video games, software cracking and exceptional computer programming (demo scene), but also to the modification of computer hardware and other electronic devices, see modding

See also

• Timeline of hacker history
• Hack (technology)
• Category:Computer hacking

References

Related books

Computer security hacking

• Sterling, Bruce (1992). The Hacker Crackdown. Bantam. ISBN 0-553-08058-X.
• Slatalla, Michelle (1995). Masters of Deception: The Gang That Ruled Cyberspace. HarperCollins. ISBN 0-06-017030-1. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
• Dreyfus, Suelette (1997). Underground: Tales of Hacking, Madness and Obsession on the Electronic Frontier. Mandarin. ISBN 1-86330-595-5.
• Verton, Dan (2002). The Hacker Diaries : Confessions of Teenage Hackers. McGraw-Hill Osborne Media. ISBN 0-07-222364-2.

Academic hacking

• Levy, Steven (1984). Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution. Doubleday. ISBN 0-385-19195-2.
• Turkle, Sherry (1984),The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit , New Edition: MIT Press 2005, ISBN 0262701111
• Graham, Paul (2004). Hackers and Painters. ISBN 0-59-600662-4. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |autherlink= ignored (help)

External links

Computer security hacking

• The Ten Biggest Legends of the Hacker Universe

Academic hacking

• The Jargon File
• The New Jargon File: An effort to establish an open hacker culture document, in the tradition of the Jargon File
• How To Become A Hacker by Eric S. Raymond
• On Hacking by Richard M. Stallman