Hacker
Hacker is a term used to describe different types of computer experts. It is also sometimes extended to mean any kind of expert, especially with the connotation of having particularly detailed knowledge or of cleverly circumventing limits."Hacker" is used in two main ways, one positive and and one pejorative. It can be used in the computing community to describe a particularly brilliant programmer or technical expert (for example: "Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux, is a genius hacker."). This is said by some to be the "correct" usage of the word (see the Jargon File definition below). In popular usage and in the media, however, it generally describes computer intruders or criminals. "Hacker" can be seen as a shibboleth, identifying those who use it in its positive sense as members of the computing community.
As a result of this conflict, the term is the subject of some controversy. The pejorative usage is disliked by many who identify themselves as hackers, and who do not like their label used negatively. Many users of the positive form say the "intruder" meaning should be deprecated, and advocate terms such as "cracker" or "black-hat" to replace it. Others prefer to follow common popular usage, arguing that the positive form is confusing and never likely to become widespread.
Here is a timeline of the noun "hack" and etymologically related terms as they evolved in historical English:
History
The modern, computer-related form of the term is likely rooted in the goings on at MIT in the 60's long before computers became common; a "hack" meant a simple, but often inelegant, solution. The term hack came to refer to any clever prank perpetrated by MIT students; logically the perpetrator is a hacker. To this day the terms hack and hacker are used in that way at MIT, without necessarily referring to computers. When MIT students surreptitiously put a police car atop the dome on MIT's Building 10, that was a hack, and the students involved were therefore hackers. This type of hacker is now sometimes called a Reality Hacker or Urban spelunker.
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.
The term was fused with computers 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.
The earliest known use of the term in this manner is from the 20 November 1963 issue of The Tech, the student paper of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology:
- "Many telephone services have been curtailed because of so-called hackers, according to Prof. Carlton Tucker, administrator of the Institute phone system. [...] The hackers have accomplished such things as tying up all the tie-lines between Harvard and MIT, or making long-distance calls by charging them to a local radar installation. One method involved connecting the PDP-1 computer to the phone system to search the lines until a dial tone, indicating an outside line, was found. [...] Because of the "hacking," the majority of the MIT phones are "trapped.""
The positive usage of hacker. One who knows a (sometimes specified) set of programming interfaces well enough to write software rapidly and expertly. This type of hacker is well-respected, although the term still carries some of the meaning of hack, developing programs without adequate planning. This zugzwang gives freedom and the ability to be creative against methodical careful progress.
At their best, hackers can be very productive. The downside of hacker productivity is often 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 environments 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.
Types of hackers in this sense are gurus and wizards. "Guru" implies age and experience, and "wizard" often implies particular expertise in a specific topic, and an almost magical ability to perform hacks no one else understands.
The most common usage of "hacker" in the popular press is to describe those who subvert computer security without authorization. This can mean taking control of a remote computer through a network, or software cracking. This is the pejorative sense of hacker, also called cracker or black-hat hacker in order to preserve unambiguity.
There are several recurring tools of the trade used by hackers to gain unauthorized access to computers:
There is a third meaning which is a kind of fusion of the positive and pejorative senses of hacker. The term white hat hacker is often used to describe those who attempt to break into systems or networks in order to help the owners of the system by making them aware of security flaws, or to perform some other altruistic activity. Many such people are employed by computer security companies (such professionals are sometimes called sneakers).
White hat hackers often overlap with black hat depending on your perspective. The primary difference is that a white hat hacker claims to observe the hacker ethic. 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 or bad may depend on whether you respect the letter of the law, but is considered by some in the computing community to be a white hat type of activity. Some use the term grey hat to describe someone on the borderline between black and white.
[originally, someone who makes furniture with an axe]
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.
The earliest Stanford revisions of the Jargon file (1975) did not describe the term so positively, including only definitions 4, 5 and 8. The current definition was written in more or less its current form around 1980 at MIT. Definition 8 was "deprecated" in the 1990s by Jargon File editor Eric S. Raymond, a known advocate of the positive usage of "hacker".
Cracker, Black-hat: A hacker in the negative sense.
Script kiddie: A hacker, in the negative sense, with little or no skill. A script kiddie simply follows directions or uses a cook-book approach without fully understanding the meaning of the steps they are performing.
White-hat, Sneaker, Grey-hat: A hacker who breaks security but who does so for altruistic or at least non-malicious reasons. The darker the hat, the more the ethics of the activity can be considered dubious.
Note also that even among users of the positive sense of "hacker", the noun hack usually means kludge and thus nearly always has a negative connotation. Meanwhile, the verb hack can share the same positive connotations.
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.
Categories of hacker
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.Hacker: Brilliant programmer
Hacker: Intruder and criminal
(Note that many people conflate the terms "virus" and "worm", using them both to describe any self-propagating program. In practice the distinction may be difficult to make, as certain programs exhibit both virus and worm-like properties. However, when a distinction is made, it is as described above.)
An incompetent black-hat hacker who is unable to write his own tools, let alone to understand computers' inner workings, is known as a script kiddie. The term expresses contempt, being meant to indicate that he is immature and only uses other people's "scriptss" and programs in order to harrass users.Hacker: Security expert
Jargon File definition
The following is the definition given by the most recent edition of the Jargon File (a dictionary of hacker jargon), which emphasizes the positive sense of "hacker". The definitions in this dictionary were not made through research into common usage, but reflect to some extent the opinions of its editors. Hence, the following is accepted by some but not all of the hacker community.
hacker n.
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. Summary of terms
Guru, Wizard: Types of hacker in the positive sense. Notable hackers
Brilliant programmers
Intruders and criminals
Note that many of these have since turned to fully legal hacking.Security experts
Other notable characters
See also
External links
New York street sign, c. 1965
Other meanings of the word "hacker"