From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
A hacker is anyone who enjoys the intellectual challenge of creatively overcoming or circumventing limitations, primarily in their fields of interest, namely programming or electrical engineering. As will be discussed below, there is a trend in the popular press to use the term to describe computer criminals (which some call crackers), and others, whose actions run afoul of various governments. This trend annoys some old-school computer/technology enthusiasts, although not all old-school hackers - some of them, like Steve Wozniak, hacked regardless of whether their activities were legal or illegal.
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In the nascent computer culture of the 1960s, the unavoidable analogy to "hacking" programs was the already-established counter-culture practice of chopping Harley-Davidsons in Southern California: taking them apart and "chopping" their frames, improvising to make them lower, sleeker, faster, hotter than their uncustomized "stock" originals.
Computer culture at MIT developed when members of the Tech Model Railroad Club started working with a Digital Equipment Corporation PDP-1 computer and applied local model railroad slang to computers. In modern computer culture, the label "hacker" is a compliment, indicating a skilled and clever programmer. In the media, however, it has negative connotations and has become synonymous with "software cracker".
The term hacker has six meanings that are in common usage:
"Script kiddie" is reserved for a computer user of little or no skill who simply follows directions or uses a cook-book approach without fully understanding the meaning of the steps they are performing.
"h4x0r" (pronounced Hacks-Or) is a script kiddie in the context of a computer game (i.e. someone who uses a program to modify a game giving them special and unfair advantages). "h4x0r" is often used jokingly or as a term of endearment between gamers.
Note that while the term hacker denotes competence, the noun hack often means kludge and thus has a negative connotation while the verb hack generally shares the same competent connotations.
See also Jargon File.
The hacker community (the set of people who would describe themselves as hackers, or who would be described by others as hackers) falls into at least three partially overlapping categories. The word hacker probably derives from the somewhat derogatory hack, used in the newspaper industry typically to refer to a Journalist who types his stories without checking his facts first.
One who knows a (sometimes specified) set of programming interfaces well enough to write novel and useful software without conscious thought on a good day. This type of hacker is respected within the development community for the freedom they represent, although the term still carries some of the meaning of Hack, developing programs without adequate planning. This zugzwang sets freedom and the ability to be creative against methodical careful progress. Corporate programming environments typically favor only either the good hackers or the careful computer scientist.
At their best, Hackers can be very productive. Industry standard rates of development are in the range of 6-10 lines of code (debugged, and documented) per hour. A Hacker in stride can produce a few hundred or occasionally even thousands lines of code an hour by leveraging their previous work. As a result a Hacker may be able to sketch out the full shape of a program to a level of quality that can be used for demonstrating ideas in less than a week. Thus it isn't hard to see what some companies find useful in Hacker talent.
The down side of Hacker productivity is generally agreed to be in maintainability, documentation, and completion. Very talented hackers may become bored with a project once they have figured out all of the hard parts, and be unwilling to finish off the details. This attitude can cause friction in shops where other programmers are expected to pick up the half finished work, decipher the structures and ideas, and bullet-proof the code. In other cases, where a Hacker is willing to maintain their own code, a company may be unable to find anyone else who is capable or willing to dig through code to maintain the program if the original programmer moves on to a new job.
The popular press has been known to use the terms "hacker" and occasionally "cracker" for someone who attempts to break into or otherwise subvert the security of a system or network. Both usages are annoying to some in the developer community who grew up with the primary meaning of "hacker" in the Guru sense, and who don't see the problem solved by the invention of new and nebulous words like "cracker" or "black hat". Instead, there has been a move to define terms when describing these people.
While it is possible to use one's "hacker" skills in an illegal way, this tends to go against the loosely defined hacker ethic. One can certainly use hacking skills to commit a crime. However, this means that this particular hacker is now a criminal, sometimes called the nebulous term "cracker".
Software cracking is the process of removing any sort of software enforced protection scheme from a piece of software.
There are several recurring tools of the trade used by hackers to gain unauthorized access to computers:
White hat hackers often overlap with black hat depending on your perspective. The primary difference is that a white hat hacker claim they observe the hacker ethic, a sort of golden rule of computing similar to: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Like black hats, white hats are often intimately familiar with the internal details of security systems, and can delve into obscure machine code when needed to find a solution to a tricky problem without requiring support from a system manufacturer.
An example of a hack: Microsoft Windows ships with the ability to use cryptographic libraries built into the operating system. When shipped overseas this feature becomes nearly useless as the operating system will refuse to load cryptographic libraries that haven't been signed by Microsoft, and Microsoft will not sign a library unless the US Government authorizes it for export. This allows the US Government to maintain some perceived level of control over the use of strong cryptography beyond its borders.
While hunting through the symbol table of a beta release of Windows, a couple of overseas hackers managed to find a second signing key in the Microsoft binaries. That is without disabling the libraries that are included with Windows (even overseas) these individuals learned of a way to trick the operating system into loading a library that hadn't been signed by Microsoft, thus enabling the functionality which had been lost to non-US users.
Whether this is good (white hat) or bad (black hat) may depend on whether you are the US Government or not, but is considered by some of the computing community to be a white hat type of activity.
hacker n. [originally, someone who makes furniture with an axe]The term `hacker' also tends to connote membership in the global community defined by the net (see the network and Internet address). For discussion of some of the basics of this culture, see the How To Become A Hacker FAQ. It also implies that the person described is seen to subscribe to some version of the hacker ethic. It is better to be described as a hacker by others than to describe oneself that way. Hackers consider themselves something of an elite (a meritocracy based on ability), though one to which new members are gladly welcome. There is thus a certain ego satisfaction to be had in identifying yourself as a hacker (but if you claim to be one and are not, you'll quickly be labeled bogus). See also geek, wannabe. This term seems to have been first adopted as a badge in the 1960s by the hacker culture surrounding TMRC and the MIT AI Lab. We have a report that it was used in a sense close to this entry's by teenage radio hams and electronics tinkerers in the mid-1950s.
- A person who enjoys exploring the details of programmable systems and how to stretch their capabilities, as opposed to most users, who prefer to learn only the minimum necessary.
- One who programs enthusiastically (even obsessively) or who enjoys programming rather than just theorizing about programming.
- A person capable of appreciating hack value.
- A person who is good at programming quickly.
- An expert at a particular program, or one who frequently does work using it or on it; as in `a Unix hacker'. (Definitions 1 through 5 are correlated, and people who fit them congregate.)
- An expert or enthusiast of any kind. One might be an astronomy hacker, for example.
- One who enjoys the intellectual challenge of creatively overcoming or circumventing limitations.
- [deprecated] A malicious meddler who tries to discover sensitive information by poking around. Hence `password hacker', `network hacker'. The correct term for this sense is cracker.
Hacker and Hack are also: terms for a taxicab driver (because a taxicab can be called a hack, a shortened form of hackney carriage).
Hacker, in golf, means a duffer, a mediocre player who enjoys playing but makes no serious effort to improve his skill.
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