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What is a Hacker?
-- Karen K. Lo
Many new students in Computing Science wrongly define the term hacker. This term
originates from the term hack. The formal definition of hack is defined to be:
- n. Originally, a quick job that produces what is needed, but not well.
- n. An incredibly good, and perhaps very time-consuming, piece of work that produces
exactly what is needed.
- vt. To bear emotionally or physically. "I can't hack this heat!"
- vt. To work on something (typically a program). In an immediate sense: "What are
you doing?" "I'm hacking TECO." In general (time-extended) sense:
"What do you do around here?" "I hack TECO." More generally, "I
hack "foo"" is roughly equivalent to "foo" is my major interest
(or project)". "I hack solid-state physics." See Hacking X for Y.
- vt. To pull a prank on. See sense 2 and hacker (sense 5).
- vi. To interact with a computer in a playful and exploratory rather than goal-directed
way. "Whatcha up to?" "Oh, just hacking."
- n. Short for hacker.
- See nethack.
- [MIT] v. To explore the basements, roof ledges, and steam tunnels of a large,
institutional building, to the dismay of Physical Plant workers and (since this is usually
performed at educational institutions) the Campus Police. This activity has been found to
be eerily similar to playing adventure games such as Dungeons and Dragons and Zork. See
also vadding.
The term hacker follows:
n.
- The belief that information-sharing is a powerful positive good, and that it is an
ethical duty of hackers to share their expertise by writing free software and facilitating
access to information and to computing resources whenever possible.
- 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.
Both of these normative ethical principles are widely, but by no means universally,
accepted among hackers. Most hackers subscribe to the hacker ethic in sense 1, and many
act on it by writing and giving away free software. A few go further and assert that all
information should be free and any proprietary control of it is bad; this is the
philosophy behind the GNU project.
In general terms, a hacker is an "enthusiastic programmer", and likes to
"perfect technologies". A hacker is a very productive person. They are some of
the main producers of freeware found online. The hacker usually attempts to do something
in the quickest and easiest way possible, - i.e. the quick and dirty way - even if it
makes no sense to others, or doesn't follow the rules. If it works, that is all that
counts. Hackers like to find shortcuts. They do not like to conform to standards, and like
to be different from others. In other words, they like to do things their own way, no
matter how much criticism they may encounter; and they are proud of the short cuts or
discoveries that they find and successfully use.
Many students confuse the term hacker with the term cracker. In fact, a hacker does not
have a specific purpose or goal in mind when he/she is hacking. The hacker hacks mainly
for fun or entertainment, or to play a joke, in a playful manner; whereas, the cracker has
malicious intent. The cracker's main purpose is to make life difficult for others by
breaking into computer systems to steal passwords or valuable information, or to create
disturbances in these systems.
The term cracker is defined as:
- One who breaks security on a system. Coined ca. 1985 by hackers in defense against
journalistic misuse of hacker (q.v., sense 8). An earlier attempt to establish 'worm' in
this sense around 1981-82 on USENET was largely a failure.
Crackers pride themselves on their ability to create havoc to other users, and do not
care how many people they affect. In fact, the more people they can frustrate, the better.
Please do not confuse these two terms. Hackers will be very upset if they are thought
of as crackers. Even crackers may be upset since they feel that hackers are inferior to
them.
References
The Jargon File 3.0.0.
[On-line]. Available: www.it.com.au/jargon.
Cited 1999 Jan. 19.
No Title. (1996).
[On-line]. Available: www.abel.net.uk/~dms/archive/whatis.html.
Cited 1999 Jan. 19.
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