What is a Cracker?
A Cracker is a computer savvy person who uses their skills to defeat the security on other systems. He does so to gain access to that computer system’s resources. The cracker then either damages these resources or exploits them.
Cracker exploits include stealing trade secrets from a company, stealing processor power to use on their system, and using the system to forward connections and actions in order to make their activates harder to track or make further attacks easier.
There is a small group of people who believe themselves to be crackers; however, the majority of computer savvy people call them “Script Kiddies.” A script kiddie is a person who downloads programs, also known as “scripts,” created by actual crackers and use them to damage or gain access to another’s system. Not real crackers, they instead use the skills of these real crackers to their own ends.
An example of an actual cracker is the identity thief who gains access to the supposedly confidential records of a company in order to gain information about their employees or customers to be used later on for financial gain.
Cracking is almost universally considered to be Black Hat.
April 26th, 2007 at 8:39 am
http://www.ubersoft.net/d/20001106.html
April 26th, 2007 at 2:09 pm
The term hacker can also be used for examples of when someone penetrates or cracks a system using software hacked to do a different thing than was originally intended.
There is crossover of the term hacker and cracker.
April 26th, 2007 at 2:15 pm
[…] Josh the Aspie’s Blog If you want to know about the life and thoughts of a sucessful Aspie, you’ve come to the right place « What is a Cracker? […]
April 26th, 2007 at 5:23 pm
The term Hacker is older then that and comes from old HAM radio early computer people who literally had to build their boards and everything. I’m not sure about all the history but it’s there.. Today anyone that is in the slightest a computer enthusiast and deals with computer security carries the Hacker label.
Crackers was a term used by those that cracked and editing source of legit programs to do something else.. Today that term is used by people to distinguish between the good guys and bad guys. Instead of just using the White hats and Black hats.
Smiles comfortably wearing a grey hat.
April 26th, 2007 at 6:52 pm
Ryv:
Nice comic, and a topical one, thanks for the link.
Darksat:
True. And any Cracker worth their salt will hack their own system to give them the edge they need. There is a lot of controversy as to just what kind of relationship the terms, and their corresponding sub cultures have.
Auly:
Yep. I actually mentioned HAM operators in my post about hackers. And welcome to my blog!
April 26th, 2007 at 7:07 pm
[…] but merely to spread it’s self, and make certain changes to the system. While black hat Crackers program the majority of viruses out there, especially the big ones people have heard […]