2. What Is A Hacker?
The
Jargon File contains a bunch
of definitions of the term `hacker', most having to do with technical
adeptness and a delight in solving problems and overcoming limits. If
you want to know how to
become a hacker, though, only two are
really relevant.
There is a community, a shared culture, of expert programmers and
networking wizards that traces its history back through decades to the
first time-sharing minicomputers and the earliest ARPAnet experiments.
The members of this culture originated the term `hacker'. Hackers
built the Internet. Hackers made the Unix operating system what it is
today. Hackers run Usenet. Hackers make the World Wide Web work. If
you are part of this culture, if you have contributed to it and other
people in it know who you are and call you a hacker, you're a
hacker.
The hacker mind-set is not confined to this software-hacker culture.
There are people who apply the hacker attitude to other things, like
electronics or music -- actually, you can find it at the highest
levels of any science or art. Software hackers recognize these
kindred spirits elsewhere and may call them "hackers" too -- and some
claim that the hacker nature is really independent of the particular
medium the hacker works in. But in the rest of this document we will
focus on the skills and attitudes of software hackers, and the
traditions of the shared culture that originated the term
`hacker'.
There is another group of people who loudly call themselves hackers,
but aren't. These are people (mainly adolescent males) who get a kick
out of breaking into computers and phreaking the phone system. Real
hackers call these people `crackers' and want nothing to do with them.
Real hackers mostly think crackers are lazy, irresponsible, and not
very bright, and object that being able to break security doesn't make
you a hacker any more than being able to hotwire cars makes you an
automotive engineer. Unfortunately, many journalists and writers have
been fooled into using the word `hacker' to describe crackers; this
irritates real hackers no end.
The basic difference is this: hackers build things, crackers break them.
If you want to be a hacker, keep reading. If you want to be a cracker,
go read the
alt.2600 newsgroup and get
ready to do five to ten in the slammer after finding out you aren't as
smart as you think you are. And that's all I'm going to say about
crackers.