Ben's House of Pancakes

Hackers vs. Crackers

I was reading an article on a UK-based news site this morning, and found something very fitting - they actually got it right for once. I am speaking of the difference between Hackers and Crackers, something the media has completely failed to grasp, until now.

For the longest time, news reports would say that "hackers" were breaking into systems and stealing valuable data which may contain social security numbers for hundreds of thousands of people, or some such thing. Thanks Dateline, 20/20, and 60 minutes for telling the whole world that "hackers" are "evil" and "out to steal data." I think you mean crackers, and no I don't mean "the kind you eat" or "a white guy who can't dance."

Crackers are the people who should be feared. They are the ones who break in and steal data, not hackers. Us hackers are nice people, when we compromise a system (with permission, of course) we don't steal the data, instead we tell the owner of the system (who likely hired us in the first place). That way they know the weakness of their system, so when a cracker comes along, they are safe from having their data stolen.

This news site I mentioned earlier was saying that someone hacked the iPhone. Why yes they did! They defeated the security which normally allows the iPhone to only work with AT&T. No data was stolen, no harm was done. AT&T is probably fuming that the iPhone can be hacked in such a way, that's ok, I don't know of anyone who was happy when they found out that their system was not secure. The point now is that AT&T can do something about it, or they could just leave it alone. That's their choice.

The bottom line: Hackers good, Crackers bad.

So now you know.

Posted at 12:22PM Aug 29, 2007 by Benjamin Say in General  |  Comments[1]