Experts anxious over possible Web attack: CNN

[Ivan Seeking]

"CNN) -- Seeing a rise in hacker activity that could be a prelude to a broad Internet attack, security experts Thursday urged computer users to protect their machines by installing a free patch offered by Microsoft."

http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/internet/07/31/internet.atttack/index.html

 

[Adam]

Right. Install more Microsoft software. That'll reduce hacker activity. Riiiight...

 

[Dagenais]

Seeing a rise in hacker activity that could be a prelude to a broad Internet attack

That'll reduce hacker activity.

You misunderstand the word Hacker.

Being a hacker is a good thing, what you are thinking about is a cracker. Hacker is another word for "old-school" programmer. In Computer Science it is simply programming/programmer.

Cracker is the bad person.

The true meaning is explained more in depth here:

http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html

and here:

http://www.hprog.org/fhp/ProgrammingFaq


Edit:

I don't mean to be portrayed as some smartass who goes out picking at people's post, but Hacker is a widley misused term that needs to be corrected. You will find old programmers doing the same on Programming or Computer Science boards as well.

 

[Zantra]

increased hacker activity coinciding with the latest DEFCON convention? NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

 

[Adam]

As a programmer, I couldn't care less about some usenet geeks' definitions of the terms. Every few years people re-write dumb-arse webpages and try to tell people they know the real, original meanings of crap like that. People who make those webpages are like the ones who try to tell people about "netiquette". They can shove it where the sun doens't shine. I have no time for their idiotic ideas of rules and such, and less time for their theories about how the net should be used. I never have cared about one tosser's definition of hacker and cracker versus some other tosser's definitions. I only need one definition: a person who screws over other people for no good reason is a complete wanker. That's good enough for me.

 

[Shadow]

Yeah kenikov the problemis that the media calls them hackers, not crackers so when they say hacker attack it really is a cracker attack, they just use the wrong word.

 

[Adam]

Look, "hackers" was originally applied to computer people who were messing around in some manner. To say their messing aronund was entirely altruistic is ridiculous. Like uni students now, they were getting into the school networks, messing around with things, many probably changing grades and such, and all this before there was any real security in computers. Yes, they were sneaky little bastards messing with other peoples' systems. Hackers. Now, people try to play with the meaning to give themselves some form of credibility. That's all it is. People mess around a bit while learning, and then they start calling themselves elite and look down their noses at those who are still doing what they themselves did only a couple of years ago. That is the only difference between hacker and cracker. It's the same in any subculture; people will start referring to themselves as the elite in some capacity, and other suckers will take up the chant.

 

[Dagenais]

As a programmer, I couldn't care less about some usenet geeks' definitions of the terms. Every few years people re-write dumb-arse webpages and try to tell people they know the real, original meanings of crap like that. People who make those webpages are like the ones who try to tell people about "netiquette". They can shove it where the sun doens't shine. I have no time for their idiotic ideas of rules and such, and less time for their theories about how the net should be used. I never have cared about one tosser's definition of hacker and cracker versus some other tosser's definitions. I only need one definition: a person who screws over other people for no good reason is a complete wanker. That's good enough for me.

No. If you read the first link, you would realize that it isn't rewritten every year.

And the crackers don't get applied by it from the media, they just started calling themselves that and the media followed.

Read the link or follow-up some more reading at other sites like www.everything2.com.

They are not idiots. Usually they are quailified Computer Science students or more.

They know what they are talking about.