Thursday

Hacking

Understanding the Terms of Hacking

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Let’s take a couple of minutes to be certain that bookyou know what it means when we talk about a hacker. Many different terms are used to describe a hacker, many of which have different connotations depending on who is describing whom.Take a look at The Jargon File (http://info.astrian.net/jargon) to get a sense of how the community has developed its own vocabulary and culture.

Webster’s Dictionary appropriately defines hacking as a variety of things, including a destructive act that leaves something mangled or a clever way to circumvent a problem; a hacker can be someone who is enthusiastic about an activity. Also, in the IT world, not every “hacker” is malicious, and hacking isn’t always done to harm someone.

Within the IT community, hackers can be classified by ethics and intent. One vital defining issue is that of public full disclosure by a hacker once he or she discovers a vulnerability. Hackers may refer to themselves as white hat hackers, like the symbol of Hollywood’s “excellent guy” cowboys, meaning that they are not necessarily malicious; black hat hackers
are hackers who break into networks and systems for gain or with malicious intent.

But, defining individuals by their sense of ethics is subjective and misleading—a distinction is also made for gray hat hackers, which reflects strong feelings in the community against the assumptions that come with either of the other marks.

In any case, a unifying trait that all self-described “real” hackers share is their respect for a excellent intellectual challenge. People who engage in hacking by using code that they clearly do not know (script kiddies) or who hack solely for the purpose of breaking into other people’s systems (crackers) are considered by skilled hackers to be no more than vandals. In this article, when we refer to “hackers,” we are using it in a general sense to mean people who are tampering, uninvited, with your systems or applications—whatever their intent.