Date: Wed, 6 Mar 2002 00:27:51 -0600 From: "Mike Meyer" <mwm-dated-1015828071.85b1a7@mired.org> To: Miguel Mendez <flynn@energyhq.homeip.net>, Cliff Sarginson <csfbsd@raggedclown.net>, anderson@centtech.com Cc: Josef Karthauser <joe@tao.org.uk>, chat@freebsd.org Subject: Re: http://users.uk.freebsd.org/~juha/ Message-ID: <15493.46823.314020.486195@guru.mired.org> In-Reply-To: <20020305164957.A91495@energyhq.homeip.net> References: <Pine.LNX.4.43.0203011634360.2796-100000@pilchuck.reedmedia.net> <3C7FB956.18428.510B414@localhost> <20020301201318.C3880@over-yonder.net> <200203051407.g25E7WF10805@dungeon.home> <20020305165222.GC705@raggedclown.net> <000c01c1c322$df0f22a0$0101a8c0@noc2> <20020304202541.U91555-100000@earl-grey.cloud9.net> <20020305015104.GA40292@core.usrlib.org> <20020305114625.GA11426@raggedclown.net> <20020305144726.B89475@energyhq.homeip.net> <3C84CE12.5FFBFF0C@centtech.com> <20020305154017.GB17913@genius.tao.org.uk> <20020305164957.A91495@energyhq.homeip.net> <20020305155144.GD17913@genius.tao.org.uk> <20020305171005.GD705@raggedclown.net>
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Miguel Mendez <flynn@energyhq.homeip.net> types: > On Tue, Mar 05, 2002 at 03:40:17PM +0000, Josef Karthauser wrote: > As someone pointed out, in this particular case (attacking a freebsd.org > box), should be defined as the action of a script kiddiot. Calling > him/her a hacker would be offensive to real hackers :-) Right. The problem is, the media people want to call them hackers. I had one of my clients boxes broken into at one point (I wasn't admining it, so don't blame me). We knew who it was, and knew the kid was abou 15. The PR person wanted to call them "hackers". I pointed out that "juvenile delinquent" would be more accurate, and would counter the goals the JD in question, by associating him with taggers and gangs instead of the elite of the programming world. The PR person responded that that wasn't news, so we had to call him a "hacker". Cliff Sarginson <csfbsd@raggedclown.net> types: > But since all hackers are crackers, but not every cracker is crackers, > or a hacker.. :) I hope you're kidding about the first part. Not all hackers are crackers, though Eisner and company is working on changing that. > I believe that it is actually the word "hackers" that has been hijacked > and misused by journalists when they mean crackers. Correct. > Hackers comes from the common expression "to hack code" and is not > (or was not) perjorative. A crackers is not just someone who breaks > game protections, it is someone more like a "safe cracker", someone > who breaks any kind of secure (so-called) system. I would say that doing that to your system was fine, but doing it to someone else's was being a cracker. Again, they're changing the laws to make both acts illegal. > I always find this talk of "script kiddies" as sweeping away a problem > as some kind of juvenile vandalism. There are much more serious people > at work on it than that. Both cases exist, but the ones that get the press are almost all JD's, even if they grew up without growing out of juvenility. The people who are serious about it generally don't want press, and don't want you to know they've been in. They're not doing it to learn, they're engaged n corporate espionage, or theft of real resources, etc. Eric Anderson <anderson@centtech.com> types: > Heh, yea, it seems to me that crackers were those people that pirated softare > and made cracks, hence crackers. Hackers were the people that, well, HACKed.. I > see people referring to hackers as crackers and crackers as hackers.. I'm not > sure when the confusion started, but about 10-15 years ago, there wasn't much > media hype about this stuff.. The media created the hype. The term "hacker" actually came out of the MIT model train club. The best computer geeks at MIT tended to be members - for a while, anyway. I don't know why the media picked up that term, other than that there was no other one-word description that came anywhere near the mark. > (If a hacker is a cracker's attacker, and the attacker's hacked cracker is not a > hacker, then is a cracker the hacker's attacker?) mu. > Miguel Mendez wrote: > > On Tue, Mar 05, 2002 at 12:46:25PM +0100, Cliff Sarginson wrote: > > Cracker is nothing, just a stupid term made up by journalists and > > clueless people like Suckomu Shimomura. ;-P No, it was made up by real hackers - the kind that get invited to the hackers conference - to describe people who break into computer systems that they aren't allowed onto, so they could continue calling themselves hackers without people assuming they were some kind of criminal. I was that the hackes conference the press was allowed to visit. The piece on he conference made it out like we were all some kind of villains, plotting the next attack on Silicon Valley. Never mind that a measurable percentage of the *ownership* of Silicon Valley was in attendance. Notable for his absense was Captain Crunch. <mike -- Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org> http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/ Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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