Re: The good and bad of computer hacking

[InfoSec News <isn () c4i org>]

Forwarded from: edison <edison () dhp com>

Thomas,

Thanks for the comments.  I'm inclined to agree.

Back in my day, 'cracking' was bypassing software security on the
Apple ][ or the Commodore 64.  'Hacking' was exploring computers
and/or networks (such as they were back then).  There were hackers
that were purely motivated by curiosity and a desire to learn how
things work.  And there were hackers who were power hungry or out just
for bragging rights.  And back then, you had to at least be in the
former group at one point to ooze into the second group, since there
weren't ready-made hacking tools available for download.

The cracking culture has retained the name it assumed in the 80's.  
Just find archives of Fravia's Page of Reverse Engineering or
www.astalavista.com/library/.

Anyone remember Bill Landreth?  He wrote "Out of the Inner Circle" in
1985. His handle was "The Cracker", but he always referred to the art
as hacking. Hacking is hacking, but like Mr. Greene stated, there are
good hackers and there are bad hackers.  I just wish I could put
"Hacker" on my resume - it sounds soooo much sexier than "Penetration
Tester".

I dunno.  Maybe I'm just and old fogie.  I don't call the stuff coming
out of the radio these days 'music' either.

-edison <- my _hacker_ handle


On Fri, 13 Dec 2002, InfoSec News wrote:

> Forwarded from: Thomas C. Greene <tcgreene () bellatlantic net>
>
> i've always been dissatisfied with the vagueness of both terms,
> hacking and cracking.  neither says anything about motivation.  since
> i used to write about this stuff a great deal, i came up with a scheme
> that makes sense - at least to me.  i'd like to share it for what it's
> worth.  to give my own column some consistency, i decided that both
> words should be neutral in terms of motive.  that is, hacker or
> cracker is not a synonym for 'computer criminal', but malicious hacker
> or malicious cracker might be.

[...]



-
ISN is currently hosted by Attrition.org

To unsubscribe email majordomo () attrition org with 'unsubscribe isn'
in the BODY of the mail.