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sdtPikachu · 04-17-2002, 10:42 AM

Sigh. Yet another terminal misunderstanding of the differences between hackers and crackers.

And even within these, there's still the distinction between hackers/crackers who do/don't use software (script kiddies).

Hackers are just people who take software to bits to figure out how it works to see if they can get it to work better. They improve computer software, as well as being lawfully employed to check security holes. Unfortunately, under the piece of poo that is the DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act for those of youwho've been sitting in a cave for the past five years) they want to make it illegal to reverse engineer software to find out what's wrong with it - such as the Russian Hacker (forget his name) who broke the adobe ebooks encryption in order to make it legal in Russia (as they have more reasonable rights than you do in the US). Then he was arrested for breaking American laws in Russia. Hmm.

A cracker (comes from "cracking" the code) however is someone who uses knowledge of computers to do malicious stuff, like DoS attacks, viruses and the rest of it. 90% of them don't even know how to code, they just use programs other people make (hence "script kiddies") to do their dirty work.

A bit more understanding please! I have several friends who are hackers (one is an ex-PS2 coder), and they get very very pissed off woth the bad rep that the title gets simply cos people can't tell the difference.

04-17-2002, 10:42 AM	#7
sdtPikachu Super Toaster! sdtPikachu is offline Location: London, UK Now Playing: Posts: 384	Sigh. Yet another terminal misunderstanding of the differences between hackers and crackers. And even within these, there's still the distinction between hackers/crackers who do/don't use software (script kiddies). Hackers are just people who take software to bits to figure out how it works to see if they can get it to work better. They improve computer software, as well as being lawfully employed to check security holes. Unfortunately, under the piece of poo that is the DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act for those of youwho've been sitting in a cave for the past five years) they want to make it illegal to reverse engineer software to find out what's wrong with it - such as the Russian Hacker (forget his name) who broke the adobe ebooks encryption in order to make it legal in Russia (as they have more reasonable rights than you do in the US). Then he was arrested for breaking American laws in Russia. Hmm. A cracker (comes from "cracking" the code) however is someone who uses knowledge of computers to do malicious stuff, like DoS attacks, viruses and the rest of it. 90% of them don't even know how to code, they just use programs other people make (hence "script kiddies") to do their dirty work. A bit more understanding please! I have several friends who are hackers (one is an ex-PS2 coder), and they get very very pissed off woth the bad rep that the title gets simply cos people can't tell the difference. __________________ "If you believe in the existence of fairies at the bottom of the garden you are deemed fit for the bin. If you believe in parthenogenesis, ascension, transubstantiation and all the rest of it you are deemed fit to govern the country." - Jonathan Meades