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I Was a Teenage Hacker 115

Posted by Roblimo from the shocking-real-life-confessions dept.
HotWired Washington Bureau Chief Declan McCullagh reveals the sordid truth about how he spent his teenage years in this article published by IntellectualCapital.com. But Declan is not nearly as sympathetic to the current generation of crackers (who will continue to be called "hackers" in the non-geek press no matter what you or I say) as the headline would lead you to believe. Here's a quote: "Oh, I know. I have become a humorless curmudgeon who cannot appreciate hackerdom's stellar exploits when I see them...."
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I Was a Teenage Hacker More

I Was a Teenage Hacker

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  • People who use Back Orifice or rootkits are NOT hackers or crackers. They are lame-ass script kiddies who wouldn't know what hacking/cracking really implies.

  • Lying... (re: He was not a teenage hacker) (Score:3)

    by DemianJ ( 30140 ) on Thursday July 15, 1999 @08:11AM (#1800810) Homepage
    I went to college with Declan at Carnegie Mellon. He was an outspoken member of Student Goverment. His skills lie in communication and writing. I highly doubt he was a teenage hacker, but clearly he knew many people who were. He has associated with enough people of technical prowess to be able to write about it rather intelligently.
    I get a kick out of reading his articles, because I knew him. But I don't buy into his attempt to gain credibility by making up some fictional past.
    Real credibility is judge on current works and perspective, not some attempt to make up some common history with one's audience.


  • Nothing wrong with elitism as long as you're part of the 31337.

    I personally don't truly mind anything that differentiates me from the mindless masses.

  • Hacker was someone that wrote code and/or made
    their way into systems. Under hacker you also
    had a special group of people called Social
    Engineers. Some of the SE's were quite good like
    burns.

    Crackers broke copyright stuff for the win32
    crowd. The win32 crowd were heavy into warez
    and needed ereet people that could do courier
    work for them. There were also many crackers
    doing useful things like popping the top on
    some big encryption. I think calling these lazy,
    no talent morons that just learned how to type
    make papasmurf on their fresh redslackbian
    install while IRCing as root is disrespectful
    to the crackers. Real crackers actually display
    some sort of intelligence. I know crackers that
    call themselve crackers (like a safe cracker?)
    and all they do all day is sit around trying to
    do things like learn how UPC codes at their
    supermarket work.

    There were these morons that stole code, hex
    edited binaries and put there names in there,
    and other lame stuff that lazy people do. We
    usually called them morons.

    see http://www.moron.com for TersIan's take
    on this.

    Lately those people
    are being called script kiddies. If the particular
    moron is afraid to run the pop3 exploit and
    only dos attacks machines (specifically smurf),
    they are called packet monkeys. The dork that
    runs antionline was a packet monkey. On IRC they
    call them IRC Warriors!!!!. The funny thing is
    that I think they like being called that. They
    are just that dumb.

    What no one seems to remember is that
    these losers were all windows users. The dorks
    that take over IRC channels. They were perfectly
    happy using windows because they didn't have to
    think. That all changed the first time one of
    these losers tried to use a lame win32 mIRC
    exploit on a linux user, and the linux user
    knocked them down with da ping o' death. That
    raised the bar. Then all these moron channel
    takeover dweebs (that take over channels all
    day for fun in the same way that you or I would
    play quake) decided to learn just enough linux
    to compile exploits. Then they learned about
    shells. Then they learned about bugtraq, and so
    on. Now these same morons are breaking into
    websites.

    Some of the website defacements at least
    make me smile. My personal favorites are the
    LAPD, ValuJet and the Spice Girls. Six Flags was
    pretty funny. But when some dork breaks into
    www.nooneevervisitsthissite.com and puts up a list
    of shoutouts and demands in 3r33t hax0r sp34ch,
    I'm not very impressed. Lets see someone get
    www.ibm.com and post a list of what all the IBM
    VP's make. Now THAT would impress me.


    As for the morons that are to lazy to learn, lets
    not call them crackers. That's to good for them.
    Lets just call them morons.

  • ...since everybody else seems to be talking only about `hacker' and `cracker' :-)

    There ought to be a word for that kind of political protest, and the media quickly jinned one up: Hacktivist. Such black-hat hackers -- some call them crackers -- have taken on not just government agencies but entire countries, and sometimes even partially succeeded.

    Well, although I've never heard the word `hacktivist' before, I think he's using the wrong word (`black-hat hackers') here. Sure, those hackers _are_ black-hat, but using such an `inside' term while so many `outside' terms in the same article becomes a little weird...

    Unauthorized access attempts represent the most pressing concern of the 745 security professionals surveyed, who estimated their financial losses due to hacking at more than $23 million in 1998. An FBI survey came up with a $120 million figure.

    Well, if they weren't trying to stop unauthorized access attempts, what were they trying to stop? The whole point of security is stopping unauthorized access, isn't it?

    It is one thing to deface the propaganda machine of a government involved in naked brutality towards its citizens. Few would shed a tear if Burma's dictatorial military junta, the subject of international obloquy, got a virtual pie thrown in its face.

    So it's accepted for some sites, but not others? Oh, how nice. Where would he draw that line? Who determines if Burma's military junta is a more legal target than NY times?

    Not quite. Neither the law nor common sense permit such creative excuses for common trespass and vandalism.

    Oh, here he refuses to differentiate. Really consistent policy, don't you think?

    Veteran hackers -- ones who write programs like Back Orifice

    If you classify cDc as veteran hackers, and BO as a good program (as this seems to imply), you're really far out. BO just set the focus on trojans, it's really a BAD program. BO2K is no better, at least it crashed on the Win95 machine I tried it on. I wonder if he has even tried it.

    IMHO, this article contains too many half-errors and self-contradictions to be taken seriously. (Well, probably this comment does, too :-) )

    /* Steinar */

  • Okay... so I went to Carnegie Mellon (CMU) in Declan's era too... *chuckle*. I can't comment on his past since I wasn't around him in middle/high-school, but yes, while he was at CMU, I'd agree his prowess was in the political/journalistic/communications arena.

    Even if I didn't always agree with the goal, he -could- get people motivated.

    -Phyxis

    PS: Yeah, after CMU, I kinda dropped off the face of the earth for a while. :-)
  • I thought BO2K was Win95 AND NT. If not, they should have warned during the installation phase, at least.

    /* Steinar */
  • "I can figure out from context what someone means by 'hacker'."

    I can too but the problem is the millions of non-computers people that can't and think you are an outlaw if you say that you are a hacker.

  • I would have far less problem to move on if the community self-designed by the word hacker since the late 70's weren't doing illegal stuffs and thus giving a bad reputation to this word also used since the late 60's but another community in the computer field.

    Ok, let say that during the 80's the virus coders called themselves software engineers because they are engineering new kind of softwares or whatever BS reason. Now, in the 90's it is them that are designed with this name by the medias. Wouldn't you be bothered to be looked oddly when you say to somebody "i'm a software engineer". Ok, the term engineer normally cannot be used that easily but that is not the point. The point is this would probably makes you angry that you can't use your activity's name without being compared to morons. Guess what, it also bothers me when morons call themselves hackers without being one.
    You might say "Ok so why do you call yourself a hacker?" but I don't call myself a hacker, I call myself a newbie or a wannabe now (I'm not a guru but I am not exactly a newbie). I understand the hacker spirit and want to be part of this community one day. enough said.
  • Great sight! This really shows what Microsoft Frontpage can do!
  • The way I read the article, he accepts the cracking of some sites (Burma's military junta), but not others (NY Times). Again, my question is: How can he do that, while refusing to draw the same type of line later on in the article?

    /* Steinar */

  • Old School: Codes of honor (Score:5)

    by Tackhead ( 54550 ) on Thursday July 15, 1999 @08:18AM (#1800830)
    As I recall from my misspent youth, our code was something like this:

    If it's military/government/medical - don't fsck with it. Don't even attempt entry. It had nothing to do with the cops - just the realization that some systems just might be mission-critical, and the consequences of a mistake ("Oops, my new command shell turned itself into a fork bomb") were too grave.

    Once in, don't damage anything. Don't touch user data. Don't interfere with the operation of the system from the end-user's perspective.

    On your way out, clean up your mess. Undo your backdoors as much as possible, and always attempt to tell the sysadmin what holes you used to get in so he can fix 'em before the next group of wanderers shows up.

    I learned a lot about various operating systems during this phase. Where else would a protogeek in the early '80s be able to play with VMS and UNIX other than on someone else's machine through an X.25 network?

    On software, yes, my friends and I cracked. We learned a lot of assembly language during this time. To this day, I still have, on a bookshelf, about half of Infocom's product line, and all of Sir-Tech's. I purchased every single box on that shelf. There were cracked Infocom games out there, but we ended up developing a crack that beat the "normal" crack by a country mile. We ended up admitting defeat on Sir-Tech's Wizardry; someone else published the crack that beat its nibble-counting scheme before we finished disassembling the code. (Then we just went back to playing it :)

    But y'know what? We learned a hell of a lot about programming in the meantime. When we weren't cracking, we were writing our own code - versions of Life, adventure games, graphics hacks, whatever we felt like doing. We started off as crackers (of other people's software and the occasional system), and learned what we needed to know to end up as hackers (of our own software).

    Someone posted an interesting comment on the intellectualcapital.com site - suggesting that today's crackers' efforts would be much better spent on using what's available to create something new, rather than idly DOSing web servers. I echo those sentiments. Nobody has to break into someone else's computer to have access to a modern operating system / compiler / better-than-a-1-MHz-8-bit-CPU. The power my friends and I once spent hours trying to get access to is now available to anyone, and it's available for free - as in beer and speech. Get out there and use it. If you must break into someone else's system, you've got the option of doing it as a friendly competition amongst your friends on your own network, a'la "Capture the Flag" at DEFCON. Besides being legal, it's a hell of a lot more challenging and fun when your opponent actually knows what he's doing!

    (Yeah, yeah, I know I'm preaching to the choir here... but hey, isn't that half the fun of /.? :-)

  • You cant really compare crackers or hackers to car theives. Its hard to come up with a valid comparision. The only one that comes to my mind right away is, have you seen the movie sneakers? They break into banks, to make it harder for other people to break into banks. They dont keep the money they stole.

    Now a car thief just steals a car, if he gave it back explaining the flaws of the alarm system it would be a different story.

  • when someone misuses the term Hacker I simply correct them in the politest way possible.
    It usually works.
  • I think most of us tend to call those people (the ones using 37337 h4x0r nuke stuff), script kiddies ;)

  • Surprise! He's an adult one too!

    He's already been deemed a poser. Let the guy sit and spin on his article.
  • Oh, I see how it is. If I actually MAKE my own spray paint (mix all the pigments and stuff), and spray my symbol on someone else's wall, thats not vandalism. Whatever dude... Its all vandalism.

    Spyky
  • Those of you in the crusade for linguistic precision should take some tips in activism from this [wwa.com] site. LS

  • Labels are for idiots (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    To my dying day I will never understand why a community with above-average intelligence and creativity will spend hours on end WHINING about the misunderstanding of the hacker/cracker term.

    Its all junior high "I need to belong" bullshit.


    I code C, I must be a Hacker/Geek.
    I played varsity volleyball in college, I must be a Jock
    I own a pickup, I must be a redneck

    Take some pride in your indivdualality (sp?)
    my name is jeff
  • If they don't steal proprietary info, then I feel it to be a misdemeanor. You need backups! You better have them anyway, for other reasons. You shouldn't post anything on the public web that you think of as secret.

    Rules of thumb:
    You need to be prepared for someone to play around with what's there. If 100 people can get at something it may be reasonable to depend on moral suasion. It 100,000 can get at it, hope that you can protect it. If 10,000,000 can get at it, never post you originals. Only post copies (and still try to protect it). If 100,000,000 can get at it, have an automatic scanner that compares the page against a rom version (CD-ROM?), can automatically copies it over whenever a change is detected.
    Any more, and what you post should be BOTH a copy, and read only.
  • err..wasnt BO2K meant for winNT machines and *not* win95 machines ?
  • It was probably when he left CMU and realized that getting press in mainstream media was a lot harder than getting your name in the school newspaper.

    Declan seems to have the knack for finding the pulse of the majority and writing (or speaking) in such a way that attracts attention, but still says "Hey! I'm one of you and I agree with you! And I'm important, too!"

    I'm suprised that, after being Student Body President for so long, he didn't try harder to break into politics.

    - Yet Another SlashDot Reader Who Went To CMU With Declan
  • >This really shows what Microsoft Frontpage can do!

    Yeah, MSFrontpage can suck my a$$.

    > Does gum chewing offend you? How do you deal with obnoxious
    > chewers/poppers? Share your worst experiences

    There was an intern in my company who was convinced that she had to use FP, and I can assure you that she found Frontpage to be just a tad more obnoxious than gum chewing.
  • I"m sure you won't actually get around to reading this, but:

    Back Orifice 2000 was designed and tested on Windows 95, 98, NT and 2000. There was a bug in the first version which caused it to crash on older win95 systems. That bug has been fixed.
  • I have to disagree. Changing websites and DOS attacks can easily can cause much more harm then grafitti. Grafitti gets the message without disrupting normal function of the wall. Defaced website usually cannot carry out its function. Suppose Somebody defaced an online brokerage and users cannot place trades as a result? This can lead to substantial financial losses. An effect a bit more drastic then grafitti.
  • Off the subject, BO2k has crashed on the win98 OSR1 and OSR2 machinge that i have tried to install it on. the GUI worked fine, as did the config, but the trojan installer I have had no luck with. anyone else have this problem? anyone actually get it to work? please let me know! [mailto]

  • In the movie Sneakers, iirc, they had a contract with a target previous to breaking in. That single difference can be enough to separate crime from security audit.
    If we were to allow "I did to test security" argument to have legal or moral force - it can be used to justify virtually anything. Unfortuinately we do not know what ones intentions were when performing the action. And as a result we must judge by the deed rather then intentions.
  • First off is this quote here...

    It is one thing to deface the propaganda machine of a government involved in naked brutality towards its citizens. Few would shed a tear if Burma's dictatorial military junta, the subject of international obloquy, got a virtual pie thrown in its face.

    Am I the only one who sees this as being pretty much the same thing as him going into some irc channel and going "Hey, I hate Burma's dictatorial military junta. Let's go hack them!"? Basically, to me, he's using a little psychowhatever trick to get some little script kiddie to go hack them. Of course, for all I know, Burma doesn't exist... Oh well. Also, here in the quote it seems he's saying its OK and shouldn't be illegal to hack into a government's or group's webpage because what they do goes against popular morals.


    Second, about the "hacker" and "cracker" thing. Most people that know the "true" meaning always say hacker is someone who fools around with stuff and programms stuff and all that. Isn't that basically what a coder is? Why not just, as someone stated earlier, find a new word? If you think about it, "hacker" is more of a fearful word than "cracker" is, and the government/media/uninformed-dumbasses like to create fear when talking about computer security. They're not gonna get the words straight, so its pretty much futile.
  • I agree 100% with all the points you made!! I can't stand that type of mass-media bullshit where people catch it and act like now they know what they're doing with computers and stuff. Anyone who claims to be a hacker or "populating cyberspace" or anything, probably isnt.
  • Well I guess I am just as "confused" as the other
    guy, but I didn't spend time hanging out in 2600.
    In fact, I've been standing outside, looking in at
    crackers and hackers, and I can't tell you the
    difference.

    For all the good hackers that are worried that
    they will be confused with eviiiiiiil crackers,
    here's an idea! There are "good hackers" and
    "evil hackers." Let's just ignore the word
    crackers from now on in this context... it's
    pointless.

    Personally, I prefer the terms "white hats" and
    "black hats." It sounds more cloak & dagger. After
    all, that's what we're arguing about, right? The
    "image" associated with words?

    -WW

    --
    Why are there so many Unix-using Star Trek fans?
    When was the last time Picard said, "Computer, bring
  • When and what chaged him into a humorless curmudgeon? Money or the suits?
  • The history of the linux and open source movement has been plagued by the gap between what we, the coders, want to produce and what the general public (PHB's in particular) actually wants to use. I suspect that the terms "hacker" and "cracker" is another example of this. Maybe we should give up the attempt to convince the overwhelming majority that their opinion is wrong and come up with a term to replace "hacker" for ourselves.

    Personally I favor the term "digirati", derived from literati.
  • Hmmm....

    it seems that he's from my area... i bet that a couple people around here still have their old HD's from the good ole bbs days... maybe i could see if he was actually an active community member back then.

    is it possible that anyone here knows his handle back then? i think i still have my commie 64 disks somewhere with all the userlogs and message boards....

  • Ah, so that's who did it. (Score:3)

    by Chris Burke ( 6130 ) on Thursday July 15, 1999 @06:38AM (#1800860) Homepage
    As if the 80's weren't bad enough, now we can blame them for the current confusion on the issue of 'hacker'.

    Think early 70's. Think MIT. A hack was a clever piece of code. To hack was to write clever pieces of code. A hacker was someone who hacked.

    Sadly, at some point they gave in to your newbie BS (due to being outnumbered), and the common usage of the word was changed. Now people are just trying to change it back.

    I like the old -origional- definition more. Sorry. Then again, like most hackers, semantics don't bother me much (just enough to post on /. -- big deal). I can figure out from context what someone means by 'hacker'.

  • I can't agree with you on this one...


    Everyone I have ever seen who had the label "digerati" applied to them were the kind of people who think that WiReD is cool, describe themselves as "working in New Media" and generally like to talk about "the development of digital nervous systems" and "populating cyberspace" rather than actually DOING anything.


    In other words, "digerati" is equivalent to "wannabe loser dork" in my mind and has been since I first saw it several years ago.


    Also, am I the only one who thinks that using the preface "cyber" with anything other than recognized constructions like "cybernetics" which predate widespread popularity of the Internet a sure sign of loserhood? Just curious...

    --

  • One last time... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Since the 80s this is what people were:

    Hackers = People who broke into place/machines/BBS's and did whatever they wanted. Either good or bad. Mostly people hacked into BBS's to show the SysOp his backdoors and (hopefully) told them how to fix this. There were many Hacker groups.

    Crackers = People who broke software piracy locks and codes for software.

    It is the 90s and the definitions have NOT changed no matter what anyone thinks. Us old schoolers wont give in to you newbie BS.

  • Us old schoolers wont give in to you newbie BS.

    Amusing. This 'newbie BS' you refer to dates back to the '60s.

    Why can't people just accept that the word 'hacker' has two separate and distinct meanings, anyway? Why the Hacker Jihad?
    --

  • Re:One last time... (Score:4)

    by William Wallace ( 18863 ) on Thursday July 15, 1999 @06:42AM (#1800866)
    I'm not old school, but your definitions make
    much more sense to me than the definitions that
    CmdrTaco and some others throw around. Crackers
    to me always implied people cracking software
    protection as well.

    Plus I'm sick of reading "They used the word
    hacker incorrectly!!" for every single mainstream
    post that is listed on /.

    LET'S MOVE ON. It's pretty clear that hacker is
    now synonymous with someone that *hacks* into a
    computer system, for good or evil. What is the
    point of dividing this up?

    It's like trying to explain to someone that you
    play the cornet, not the trumpet; the
    euphonium, not the baritone; the english horn, not
    the oboe. You drive a jeep, not a truck. You live
    in a condo, not an apartment.

    The important thing is: you KNOW what these people
    are talking about; you know what they mean.

    -WW
    --
    Why are there so many Unix-using Star Trek fans?
    When was the last time Picard said, "Computer, bring

  • More likely "responsibility"... I've even noticed the changes in myself.

  • I completely agree with this article. Portraing crackers as "cool" is hardly justifiable. I think the reason why its happening is because majority of people do not use internet for essential day to day activities. When people can't buy groceries because somebody chose to put "3l33t 5cr|pt" on the page - their attitude towards crackers would change very quickly.
    Another argument I have a problem with is stating that crackers are good ebcause they show flaws in existing systems. Yet, I haevn't met anyone who would say that car thieves are doing a service to society because they show how inadequate car alarm are. Or murderers being praised because they show flaws in law enforcement system (yes, a crime very different in magnitude, but this is the same argument). Again, in my opinion internet is viewed differently from real world because people do not rely on it for living (well, the majority of people doesn't).
  • I disagree, the fact that they misunderstand us will only add to our hipness. Furthermore it will give us a certain "bad ass" quality (those all powerful, dark, menacing hackers - you don't wanna mess with them!) that is not to be dismissed. Otherwise we'll just be a bunch of guys who sit in front of terminals way too much. No, we will remain the somewhat mysterious and misunderstood brotherhood/sisterhood of HACKERS .
  • Hackers / Crackers...whatever you feel like calling them have existed for a long time, and will continue to exist for a long long time. Certain hackers seem to crave the publics attention.


    Years ago their antics resembled unorganized, anarchaic (word?), vandalistic stunts. The good ones got what they wanted (attention) and some went to jail. Recently however some have grown up somewhat and are starting to take more time in choosing their targets. As more public attention has been focused on them, their is a push to bend societies rules and thus put more meaning and thought into their actions.


    An example of this are the recent political attacks such as that against China's firewall. By doing this the public views them as more humane and less malicous, and maybe even more poisitive human beings. This means a few things:


    *There is less pressure to stop them with legal force.


    *There is more public support for thier actions, which ultimatly leads to more and more frequent hacks / hackers.



    Is this a good thing? I have yet to decide, but im personally kinda rooting for the hackers.


    -Zack Rosen
    zkr@salsgiver.com
  • Digirati sounds way too elitist.
  • I also went to Carnegie Mellon with Declan - the memory of him that most sticks out in my mind was when he tried organize a rally at CMU when the administration blocked access to some of the usenet groups (specifically the alt.sex binaries groups). He got someone from the EFF to come speak, held the rally in front of the university computing center, and made it out to be a real freedom of speech issue. Of course, the rally was a misreable failure, both in terms of attendance and effect. The university was afraid of lawsuits , so it would have taken an act of god to get them to change thier minds, and not the 50 or so people who showed up. And in many students eyes (including my own), it really wasn't a freedom of speech issue, and we just didn't care since very few people actually used the alt.sex binary groups. Declan seemed to be alot more concerned with the issue than the reality of the situation

  • Why can't people just accept that the word 'hacker' has two separate and distinct meanings, anyway? Why the Hacker Jihad?

    Because they're tired of having the police called when they introduce themselves to someone as a hacker.
  • That still doesn't give you an excuse for misusing the term "cracker" to apply to people who break into systems. The term "hacker" applied to such people dates from the late 70s, which the term "cracker" to apply to such people dates from around 1985, according to the Jargon File.
  • I'm sure many of us who were at CMU during Declan's rule have memories and stories... Without going into detail, he seemed to be an extraordinarily self-absorbed and reckless kind of a guy....
  • Using the term cracker to refer to people who break into computer systems is indeed "newbie BS," dating from around the mid 80s. Using the term "hacker" to refer to these same people dates from the 70s, and using the term "cracker" to refer to people who break copy protection dates from the early 80s at the latest, so both predate the Jargon File's circa 1985 misuse of the term "cracker."
  • An apache book(Mind you, cracking a webpage isn't the same as rooting a box!) cost you about $50.=.

    All those idiots that bought themselves a kick ass computer and put Apache on it should actually *read* it.

    As Aleph1 once said (or linked...) 90 % of the cracks can be prevented by "man chmod"

  • but it's "can" cause more harm than grafitti. A DOS attack is maybe like putting grafitti over the windshield of a bus. Doesn't really break the bus, but takes it out of commission until someone scrapes off the paint. It's arguably a more serious "bad thing" and it has really pissed me off when I've had to respond to DOS attacks at 3am (ringgg...rinng click "WE'VE BEEN HACKED!!), but usually no big deal to get the bus back on the road.

    "Break"ing a functioning site like an online brokerage is a whole 'nother class of crime. That's vandalism. The kiddies that do this stuff should be punished the way kids that vandalize a high school or otherwise destroy property are punished. Still, you don't lock them up and throw away the key the way they are doing with Mitnick.

    I'm not saying that any of these things are OK or that people should go do them, just that we should get some perspective. The fact that a computer ws used instead of a can of spray paint or an MAD flushed down the toilet does not change the nature of hte crime committed.

    garyr

  • The word "hack" comes from the 60's, and back then it meant what we now call an ugly hack, or a quick hack.

    Besides: be glad the 80's are over. They only gave us Duran Duran
  • To my dying day I will never understand why a community with above-average intelligence and creativity will spend hours on end WHINING about the misunderstanding of the hacker/cracker term.

    Let me try to explain, then... The actual names we have for things are extremely important, because the sound of the word as it's spoken, as well as the connotations the word has (if it's a word with several meanings, as "cracker"), tend to enforce a particular idea. GM found this out the hard way when they tried to sell the Chevy Nova south of the border--"No va"=="doesn't go" in Spanish. And I think "cracker" has failed in the mainstream press because it already has several other meanings, "big dumb redneck" being one of them.

    Besides, being neurotic about labels and having the exact right name for something is a well-established computer-person trait. Having a compiler grind to a halt because of a missing ; or a call to "Printf()" may have caused this....

    (All of this is, of course, just my misguided opinion.)

  • They used to break into buildings and pull off amazing 'hacks'. Mostly by college kids.

    Kind of.

    As has been noted before... the term origionated at MIT sometime in the 60s. It always refered to a group of college kids who didn't always code.

    According the book Hackers, this first came about in the model railroad club. There were the art side of the club that did the models, landscapes, etc... then there was the technies who did all the wiring and switching (even using a retired phone switch to handle the system). Their wiring systems were very complex and when someone pulled off something new, it was called a "hack".

    This group soon found themselves gaining access to a newly installed University computer. Their technical facination drew them to it and soon they were "hacking" code.

    It might be interesting to mention that this group also "hacked" buildings. Quite often, the resources the group was interested in were placed behind locked doors. Members of the group became very good at studying and picking locks - as well as coming up with other ways to circumvent obsticles.

    In this light, its easy to see that "hacking" became primarily a code activity... but other things were also "hacked". Aspects of security were thrown in as this new wave of enthusiasts saught ways around barriers put up by a controlling regime (with a completely different view towards computing resources).

    Jump forward a decade or two. The 80's. The movie Wargames. The term "hacker" comes from a relatively closed, unoticed "society" (that had been slowly 'spreading' from its origins at MIT) and is thrust into the general public's vocabulary. Unfortuneatly, the only aspect of the word to make this transition is "one who circumvents computer security".

    Jump another decade. Now that information technology is not only vital to business, but fast becoming a strong aspect of popular culture... the entire computer culture is less closed. The media pays more attention. Computer security becomes a bigger concern and the word "hacker" as "introduced" to us in the 80s is in wide use. Unfortunately, all the old aspects of the word are lost as "hackers" become increasingly defined by vandals with increasingly malicious intent, little real computing knowledge, and even less justification for their actions.

  • Actually, going back to plain English, the
    correct term _is_ "hacker", in the sense of
    hacking through the jungle with a blunt or sharp implement.

    The "good" sense of "hacker" is in the sense
    of hacking out a sculpture rather than sculpting it nicely.

    "Hacker" simply is one of those words that has two meanings depending on context. The word "cracker" has _not_ taken on. So why keep trying to foist it on the public? It just doesn't chime well with plain English.

    A better word might be "attacker" or "Internet burglar" or "net-hacker", as opposed to "code-hacker".

    Cheerio...





  • That's simply not true. Attacking China's firewall is childish. First it is up to the Chinese citizens to attack it, as an act of rebellion against dictatorship. It's not a bunch of teenage Americans who should decide the politics in the world ! Second, in our societies, where everyone is basically free (it's the oppposite in China), it is not acceptable to vandalize, or perform illegal actions, in order to express an opinion: you are free to write them and publish them (journal, WWW), if you are doing something illegal instead, all you deserve is to go in jail.


    *I agree whith you that hacking is definantly a crime. A crime that is punishable by law, and rightfully so.

    *I would like to elaberate more one what i preveously stated.
    "the public views them as more humane and less malicous, and maybe even more positive human beings."
    ...Maybe this assumption is wrong, but IMO the public would be more likely to frown upon random acts of malicousous against innocent corporations ....Than that of a pollitically motivated assault on Chinas oppressive firewalls that "will only provide access to Chinese information sources, therefore shutting out others from around the world." -Wired News [wired.com]. While i would love to argue with you for days on end about Chinas oppressiveness, i will leave that for another forum / thread.

    No . Crackers are a nuisance, period.
    * This maybe a very sound argument, one i may adopt when i grow older (wiser?)...I have no real response other than to state that i did not say other wise in my original post.

    Buy yourself a good book about HTML or Java, and start doing something productive. The uninformed public may find crackers "cool", but real geeks know how little skill it takes to crack, and how lame it is anyway. And nobody will ever take them seriously, there is a difference between television and reality, my son.

    At this point you really loose me. The above comment seems to be a personal (unsubstantiated) attack. You make conjectures and accusiations on topics i did not even mention. If you really do have some book suggestions, i would be happy to hear them.


    Just send them to (zackr@cs.cmu.edu || zkr@salsgiver.com)


  • Once upon a time, there was a specific type of person called a scientist. This person's job was simple: To discover the secrets of the universe and to use that to the betterment of mankind.

    Since that long-forgotten time, however, scientific knowledge became too much for one person to know in it's entirety. So, "Scientist" became a blanket term, to cover multiple categories, such as "Computer Scientist," "Archaeologist," "Chemist," and "Botanist."

    These all have some bearing on the original meaning of the word, but are not related directly to each other.

    Once upon a time, there was a specific type of person called a hacker. This person's job was simple, to discover the secrets of the computer, and to use that to the betterment of mankind.

    Since that long-forgotten time, however, the politics associated around the use of such machines became varied, and split the hacker subtypes in two... White and Dark. During the evolution of these two types came new recruits into the world of computing, with the tools already made available for them. These, in turn, split off in multiple directions, and joined political factions in the Hacker hierarchy.

    Now, there IS no "Hacker" as being a person of computers. Hacker is an archetype for multiple types of people to fit within.

    see my essay on such at " http://reteo.8m.com/tech.html [8m.com]."

    Enjoy.


    --
  • I'm from the ABE area, too (though now I'm in California, of course) and I was really amused to see he went to Dieruff. I used to live on Market St. in Bethlehem...

    I was a huge BBSer, but after his time. Went by JohnGalt (yes, my Ayn Rand phase) at the time, and ran a BBS, Ragnarok, back then. I still know some people from teh BBS scene.

    0-7 day, baby! ;)

    m.

  • You're right, it will give us a certain "bad ass" quality to be known as hackers, but is that what we really want? All of the best hackers I've known have gone by a code of honor not to change anything on a remote system that they broke except the data that would allow them access back to the system, and the data that would keep them from being caught(logs, etc.). This dosen't exactly portray that we need a "bad ass" quality. Hackers themselves aren't out to hurt people, or damage systems and cause losses, they're out to explore and learn, its the script kiddies/crackers that are out to hurt/cause loss.


    I completly agree with the idea of using a different name for hackers, but will the media begin using it? I don't really think it matters what we call ourselves, the media will still see anyone who can break into a system as a hacker.

  • Damn straight, this guy _reeks_ of 'digerati'. Remember (Bob Metcalfe, was it?) who stopped thinking and started writing commentary?

    The worst part is that this guy tries to build up some kind of rep for having been a 'real hacker', (not a _real hacker_, I mean it in the poser way) thus implying that he's better than all of them. Then again, the crackers actually _do_ something, for good or ill, while he loots the <RANT>STUPID SHORT-SIGHTED MORON MASSES WHO BUY ANYTHING 'DIGITAL' AND THINK THAT 'WIRED' IS IN TUNE WITH _ANYTHING_ OTHER THAN ITS OWN INFLATED SELF-IMPORTANCE! </RANT> 'hem. Whew.

    Crackers may be bad folks, but at least they don't work for Wired, whice I'm sure has referred to formatting HTML as 'coding' at least once.

    -grendel drago

  • I sort of see where he's coming from (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Back in "my day" (mid 80's) when you cracked a system, you had to figure out everything yourself. You had to hack.

    Most crackers these days artlessly download exploits from 3l33t hax0r s1t3z. This is not hacking. It's vandalism.
  • Yeah, I guess the "bad ass" quality thing has its downside. Still I'll never call myself a member of the "digerati". That sounds positively puerile.
  • This idea has been stated before here on slashdot. It could be benificial to do so (give it a new term) but the problem is we are not a democracy. There is no "official" term, and there will always be people who dissagree with the idea. So call it what you want, and everyone else will call it what they want.
  • ragnorak... hmmm? i kindof recall that one...

    i always enjoyed Fensty's place.... and the planet magrethea....

    my handle is my email address :-)

    0-7 days... i used to get 0-1 hours things...
    ahh... to be young and spend too much time with a modem... and then to try and explain to people nowadays about how to putin a modem init string... and how zmodem, ymodem and all that good stuff used to work....

    anyway .. i live in downtown bethlehem... right by the marketplace, actually...

    anyway.. yes this is extremely offtopic...

    but i'd really like to know who this guy is/was... it would crack me up if it was really someone big from around here...
  • Really. Most of the hacks he's talking about (and you are with your grocery example) are just high tech graffiti. As such it needs to be judged accordingly.

    Nobody likes the plastering of gang signs over every surface that we see so often. If they go to jail for a few weeks for it - fine by me.

    There is also the whimsical graffiti ("Frodo Lives!" in the NY subways many years ago).

    There's also "political" graffiti. If someone paints "Saddam, Feed your People!" in 4 foot letters on a Iraqui gov't center, I can't call him a criminal. Maybe you can, I'm sure the Iraqis would.

    At worst it's "misc. mischief" - a misdemeanor in
    the US. It's not "vandalism". The graffiti gang member has to get access to the busyards to do his tagging (all right, add breaking and entering) and could just as easily have broken out all the windows and destroyed the busses. They don't, and niether do the script kiddies that put stupid messages on web sites. They deface, but don't destroy. Often (like the Seti hack of last week) they have even backed up previous content themselves - but anyone that doesn't have a good recent backup of a commercial site is a total moron.

    Get over it. This is not car theft, murder, a threat to national security or any other silly BS. It's the trivial stuff kids do an have always done, just with new tools (spray paint was also a new tool). These kids should be grounded, their allowance taken away and have to clean up trash on the hiyway on the weekeds. And then we ---- MOVE ON.

    garyr
  • What particularly confuses the terminology is that "crackers" call themselves "hackers" rather than "crackers".

    At least that's why Bruce Sterling said he named his book the "Hacker Crackdown" rather than the "Cracker Crackdown".
  • Back in the mid-late 80s while playing with code, I was considered hacking. When I was seeing if a system could be broken into, it was considered hacking. People who break copy protection off software crack it. That's always been the distinction for as long as I remember it.

    I think this whole hacking/cracking thing is wacked. You don't crack sites, you hack into sites. You don't hack passwords, you crack passwords. There is a subtle distinction between what you are doing, how you are doing it, and whether you are a hacker or a cracker. Personally, I feel that crackers are more detremental (sp?) to society, and generally have a worse image (well deserved). Hackers, depending on the group you are talking to could either be a derogatory or complimentary term.

  • Re:One last time... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I kind of agree with you. To me, the whole "Don't-use-hacker-the-term-is-cracker" debate seems just like RMS's whole "GNU/Linux" jihad. Granted, the correct term for someone who breaks into systems is 'cracker' (just like Linux really is basically the GNU Operating System), but both are just hopeless, time-wasting causes at this point.
  • Maturity.
  • They used to break into buildings and pull off
    amazing 'hacks'. Mostly by college kids. This was
    way before anything was codable. The term hacker then moved on to people also breaking into computers. Bite me!

    This usage of the term originates at MIT. The other sense of "hacker" as in a clever coder does as well. They have common origins. I think if you ask most roof & tunnel hackers still active at MIT, they will agree that the "clever coder" sense is more correct than the "person who breaks system security" one.
  • I think many people accept the word 'hacker' has two "separate and distinct" meanings.

    Hackers in the old-school "clever coder" sense used to not care that people who broke system security also called themselves "hackers". In fact, many of these people _were_ hackers in the old school sense - they actually applied cleverness in unusual ways to break security, instead of just downloading "Back Orfice" or a rootkit.

    But now if you say one of your friends is "a good hacker" people will wonder what systems he is breaking into. People or not pissed that there is this new additional meaning, but that it is destroying the ability to use the term with the original meaning. Personally I think using the term "hacker" correctly whenever appropriate is
    the best way to fix this.

    Anyway, I don't really care what system crackers want to call themselves. If burglars wanted to call themselves locksmiths why should anyone take them seriously?
  • Have you ever noticed that whenever anyone starts to talk hacking, they always mention how the number of hacks is increasing, the number of breaking *doubled* since 1997 or whatever?
    Is it just me, or is this completely natural, and expected? I mean the *Internet* itself is growing at an amazing rate, why should we expect that a property of networks, hacking, should become less relevant?
    Saying that the number of break-ins has doubled in the past year is like saying that more people are murdered in LA than in Kelly Iowa (something like 300 people).
    what this is, is FUD as far as I'm concerned, if you can't spit out some *relevant* numbers, then you don't deserve to be listened to (like the number of hacks/host, or the number of hacks/user. And if the *rate* of increase in hacking is higher or lower then the rate of growth of the Internet)
    _
    "Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
  • Checked it..
    http://www.netmeg.net/jargon/terms/h.html#hack

  • McCullagh's credibility (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I have to take everything Mr. McCullagh says with a grain of salt, as I had a credibility-shattering experience with him a couple of years ago.

    His self-styled computer guru status is a rather recent invention. Before he was HotWired's Washington man, before he got into posting to RISKS and reading bugtraq, the following happened:

    I was attending Lewis & Clark College. The Monica Lewinsky story had just broken, and in case you didn't follow too closely, Ms. Lewinsky attended Lewis & Clark a few years prior.

    Mr. McCullagh (in his capacity as a pathfinder.com writer) emailed EVERY SINGLE STUDENT who had a web page, to ask if we knew her, if we had any experiences with her that we could share, etc. You can imagine that we all welcomed Lewinsky-related spam.

    I mean, give me a break! He calls this investigative reporting? Besides, he had no way to verify anything we said, so we made up all sorts of ridiculous stories. He challenged my story by saying "If you knew her so well, where did she grow up, and what's her aunt's name and occupation?" Of course, that information had been published in the newspaper by then, so it was hardly privileged information.

    I'm rambling here. The point is: McCullagh is no techno-guru. He's a regular old reporter who read some O'Reilly book and decided he was a hacker-reporter. Let's just all ignore him.

    josh berezin
    joshb at well.com
  • Oops, it wasn't published in Wired after all. I don't know how I got it into my head that it was. Well I guess I can go back to knowing that Wired sucks...

  • One of his comments... (Score:3)

    by rnturn ( 11092 ) on Thursday July 15, 1999 @07:42AM (#1800914)
    ``For one thing, classified information is almost never on computers connected to public networks.''

    ... made me think to myself:

    Who is the real criminal here: A)the cracker who breaks into a computer containing classified information that's connected to a public network or B) the jerk who allow the computer to be connected to the public network in the first place.

    While the former is usually going to be found guilty of some sort of computer crime, IMHO, the latter is a clear violation of the regulations of any level of security clearance that I've heard about and is, I think, a felony. If any govt. agency allows this to happen and go unpunished or is stupid enough to not have a policy in place to guard against such a situation, that agency deserves to have information stolen.

    Yah, yah, yah... I know. Just because the door isn't locked isn't an invitation to come in and vandalize the place. But how would you feel about a bank that left the vault unlocked? Would you have real pity for a jewelry store whose employees left the place unlocked while they went out to lunch?

  • Not to mention that "Cracker Crackdown" sounds really silly. Like CNN lame-o title for a lawsuit against Nabisco.

    "At the top of the hour, the Cracker Crackdown--will RJR Nabisco win, or will it have to pay up?"

    -awc

  • The Norwegians have it right. (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    AFAIK only Norway has a sensible policy about computer intrusion: "if you link it, you assume responsibility for the links." If someone can post (in English, please?) real details about Norway's computer-intrusion laws I'd be grateful.

    I will bet $.02 (the value of this post) that inside five years Norway develops an extremely capable computer security industry.

    All this other chatter is just that. Sorry, but the Internet is not very regulable, and attaching moral stigma to creative play with the world's largest toy is doomed to failure; besides, it's like the grownups telling my generation not to do drugs. I can spare no pity for anyone who puts his pretty new Web site up on a leaky server. And yes, a server I'm responsible for was cracked. That was my fault, because at that time I knew almost nothing about Linux, or service ports, or firewalls. I learned.

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