Hackers: Good vs. Evil
The title "Hacker" is often associated with a social outcast banging away at the keys of his homemade supercomputer, all night and into the morning. You might picture this person locking themselves in a room for days; conspiring to steal, vandalize others property, and just plan cause destruction. The media has portrayed a hacker to be exactly that, when in fact the term to really describe this kind of behavior is a cracker. A cracker is one who breaks security on a system. Coined by hackers in defense against journalistic misuse of the term "hacker". The term "cracker" reflects a strong revulsion at the theft and vandalism perpetrated by cracking rings. Hackers think of themselves as a person who enjoys exploring the details of programmable systems and how to stretch their capabilities or a person who is good at programming quickly (Slatalla). An example of a famous cracker would be John Draper, who also served in the Vietnam War.
Hacker Adrian Lamo (left) with contemporaries Kevi...
Free Kevin bumper sticker, advocating release of K...
English: Kevin Mitnick Deutsch: Kevin Mitnick Ру...He discovered that the free whistle found in Cap'n Crunch cereal boxes produced a perfect 2600-megahertz tone. Not that big of a deal right? Wrong, when blown into the receiver of a telephone, it would allow you to make free calls (Slatalla).
There has been a violent uproar in the hacker community over the last decade about all the bad press. Hackers around the world have argued that what they do is good for society. One of the main purposes of true hackers is to find security loopholes and report them to developers, so they can be fixed. Many of these hackers actually are hired to do security consulting for companies. Chris Davis, a security consultant and ex-
Hacker, helped the FBI catch the hacker Raphael Gray a.k.a Curador. Curador was wanted for stealing 26,000 credit card...