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What is Hacker for you?


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Though we often associate Hacking with criminal activities...

Hacking does not always mean breaking into computers....

To add to the confusion, the noun "hack" also has two senses. It can be either a compliment or an insult. It's called a hack when you do something in an ugly way. But when you do something so clever that you somehow beat the system, that's also called a hack. The word is used more often in the former than the latter sense, probably because ugly solutions are more common than brilliant ones...

Hacker is for me<---->highly skilled (software/hardware) engineer....

From Wikipedia:

"A hacker is often someone who likes to create and modify computer software or computer hardware, including computer programming, administration, and security-related items. A hacker is also someone who modifies electronics, for example, ham radio transceivers, printers or even home sprinkler systems to get extra functionality or performance. The term usually bears strong connotations, but may be either favorable or denigrating depending on cultural context"

See the hacker definition controversy:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_definition_controversy

:)

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To me

Hacker = Highly skilled individual who finds creative solutions to problems they encounter. THey do this with software/hardware or a mixture of both.

Examples of hackers are programmers, engineers and IT professionals (including security consultants) who "engineer" a resolution to problems. In that vain most people who contribute to *nix, be it linux or bsd, are hackers as they usually add functionality to the OS.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Most people on MSFN are savvy and agree on that general definition. But, in my experience, the general public still considers "hacker" a negative term (the bad guys / crackers).

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The general populace likes the term hacker. It is ingrained now. It could be changed, but not likely to something that is popularly used as a racial slur (cracker). It confuses people, and most don't care enough to make a distinction.

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In the mainstream hackers are labeled as a nuisance, as evil people who like breaking into systems and destroying everything they can. The media and most security firms haven’t helped much when portraying the role of hackers in internet security and technology. According to them all hackers are thieves, cyber-terrorists, and people who maliciously infect others with malware for fun or profit. Also according to them nearly all, progression of internet and security is due to software development and big corporations.

As many of us know hackers have played a vital role in the development of software, security, and the whole internet. Without hackers who knows where we would be now. Almost all security holes that are found are reported to the vendors before being made public, many of which have months worth of notice. But how many software vendors have you actually seen give credit to the hackers for finding the bug? Not many if any at all. Many groups even dedicate their research to the finding of bugs in one vendor’s products. Some vendors are even as arrogant to ignore advisories from hacking and security groups so who is to blame when they go public and things get damaged?

One very important person in the Nuke-Development community, Technocrat of http://nuke-evolution.com says, " I personally think that certain hackers (whitehats) provide a service that is very helpful to us and our users. I know that no matter how hard we try there is always going to be holes in our software, as well as others. It is human nature to make mistakes. I would rather a whitehat hacker find these holes than a blackhat or script kiddie. We try very hard to secure our software."

The Nuke Evo dev team has been working for a year or more now making a secure and modified php nuke distro. All fixes and security comes stock so an install like this will most likely help lots of beginners. Nuke-Evolution is a third party source and is not affiliated with phpnuke.org which is another vendor who has ignored numerous advisories and even the fixes for his own product, Bad as it may sound this is a common occurance in the web development community.

Even though, the proof is almost undeniable that hackers have always had a vital role in the development of the internet and software there is still many whom feel totally different, I guess they don''t like being kept on their toes. Most of the bad image that hackers get comes from mass defacers, trojan kiddies, bot kiddies, and other unskilled people who just use other''s scripts and exploits for malicious purposes or just to make a name for themselves."

In closing i'd like to leave you with this thought, Imagine there were

never hackers, even malicious ones. Where do you think we would be as far as technology and IT security? Do you think that your data would be secure or your software would be as good? But then again you could say without hackers there wouldn’t be a need for most of the technology and software.

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@Havik: That was your first post? Nicely done, and welcome! :hello:

I think that most hackers, even the bad ones, do more good than harm. There are state-sponsored hackers out there who do the same things but have more time and resources at their disposal. Plus, you can count on them to keep their discoveries a secret. By releasing vulnerability information and allowing developers to address those issues, while raising the overall awareness of how secure things are in general, the state-sponsored hacker's work becomes more difficult.

In closing i'd like to leave you with this thought, Imagine there were

never hackers, even malicious ones. Where do you think we would be as far as technology and IT security? Do you think that your data would be secure or your software would be as good? But then again you could say without hackers there wouldn’t be a need for most of the technology and software.

The same is often said of World War II.
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What is Hacker for you?

hackers are the people who make big companies give their best in making good softwares and hardwares , if there is No hackers we would see very weak softwares and hardwares , if there is hackers there will be challange,

I had my own forum and i say thank you to alot of hackers tried to hack me because each time they try i learn alot of new things. and learn how to make my website more secure.

thank you

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haha ive been browsing this site for a few weeks now, im loving it here :thumbup i should have registered back than :lol:

Then :whistle:

(Sorry, I have a thing with grammar that just kicks in every once in a while and drives me mad and makes me post comments informing people of their mistakes.)

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wow, a debate on the definition of "hacker", i haven't seen this since last week.

Yes it is a popular discussion.

A hacker breaks into systems to learn things. No damage is to be done. After successful entry and information retreival, the owner of the system is to be reported and notified of the vulberability. Anyone who does not follow these rules are not deserving of the term "hacker".

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