I Admire...

Hackers I Admire

Before proceeding I would like to clear the difference between a hacker and a creacker. As defined by The Jargon File, Version 4.3.1, 29 JUN 2001 a hacker is (abridged for my purpose):

1. A person who enjoys exploring the details of programmable systems and howto stretch their capabilities, as opposed to most users, who prefer to learn only the minimum necessary.
2. One who programs enthusiastically(even obsessively) or who enjoys programming rather than just theorizing about programming.
3. A person who is good at programming quickly.
4. An expert or enthusiast of any kind
5. One who enjoys the intellectual challenge of creatively overcoming or circumventing limitations.

A cracker is someonene who breaks security on a system. Coined in 1985 by hackers in defense against journalistic misuse of hacker. An earlier attempt to establish `worm' in this sense around 1981-82 on Usenet was largely a failure.

Contrary to widespread myth, cracking does not usually involve some mysterious leap of hackerly brilliance, but rather persistence and the dogged repetition of a handful of fairly well-known tricks that exploit common weaknesses in the security of target systems. Accordingly, most crackers are only mediocre hackers. Thus, there is far less overlap between hackerdom and crackerdom than the reader misled by sensationalistic journalism might expect. Crackers tend to gather in small, tight-knit, very secretive groups that have little overlap with the huge, open poly-culture hackerdom; though crackers often like to describe themselves as hackers, most true hackers consider them a separate and lower form of life.

If you already know the difference between a cracker , you may want to know about a cracker's viwpoint of things too. A Comment on "Warez D00dz" Culture is an article which provides some insight to what The Scene, or "warez d00dz" culture really is.