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Yes, very true. I fall into the habit of confusing these terms in the same manner as the general public/media do. I would speculate the~90% of the people on this list are "hackers" (as you said) - and I include myself. My bad, forgive_tk (oops wrong forum - lol). Cheers, Curtis. :) On Monday 13 January 2003 14:00, Gedi wrote:
You seem to be referring to the word 'hacker' in the new context of somebody who purposely uses computers for malicious purposes. This is not true, you are referring to a cacker.
The writer of linux, linus torvalds refers to himself as a hacker as do all the linux developers (hence the term 'kernel hacking' in the kernel config menus) The worlds best computer experts are all refered to as hackers e.g. Kevin Mitnick, Bernie S, Stuart McLure etc
The pioneers at places like Sun, HP, IBM, bell are all computer hackers. Even the good ole Bill Gates was a common computer hacker back in the 70's.
95% of todays computer security experts are hackers. If it weren't for these kinds of people, the internet would not be as advanced as it is today.
Computer hackers find the holes and bugs in todays digital environment and help to patch these holes. If it weren't for the likes of these geniuses, the net would be an incredibly unsafe place to visit.
The best site to potray this is www.securityfocus.com. It is an incredible database of past and present computer news and vulnerabilities, and is entirely run by....computer hackers :)
So, as an avid online gamers I'm faced with this constantly. My call
sign
"Crusher-1" would appear as Cru5h3r-1 and L33t 5p84k is commonly used
by
script kiddies and people that have some ablility to compromise systems
or
Hack (Hax) a system, game/game file. Most likely I would avoid any
indepth
involvement from such individuals because they are generally adolescent
and
mailcious by nature. The are commonly associated in the gaming world
as
cheaters. One such case I found particularly distastful was one
individual
that was playing on a popular Counter-Strike sever. This person would
spam
the ingame chat line with "BYE" repeatedly and then execute a script
that
would crash each persons game AND the game server (which coincidently
was a
Linux server). They tend to pride themselves in defacing, control, and
otherwise screwing up indisciminant end-users' systems, most
exclusively >(of
course) Windblows. They are known for planting trojans and consider it
a
point of honor to brag about how many "zombies" they have control over. More sophisticated H4x0r5 can do some pretty substantial damage and have
been >know
to have, at least, some unix admin skills and may have the knowledge related to spoofing IP addresses, email address, etc...
Of course a real malicious "hacker" will generally keep their identity unkown and perfers to operate in stealth and in the shadows.
One such case of a group of H4xo5s can be found on Steve Gibson site: www.grc.com Wherein he discusses a DDoS attack his server suffered at the hands of
a >known
script kiddie (13 or 14 y.o) from Wisconsin (my own backyard) and how
he >got
his hands on one of Trojans, re-engineered it to return to it home
(place >of
origin) and covertly send information about the site back to him (as
well >as
the owner/admin responsible). Seems he discovered a series of "secret" (aka non-listed) IRC channels frequented by script kiddies. It's a long but
interesting read.
Cheers, Curtis.
-- The reasons behind the DMCA, TCPA, and Palladium that are presented to the public are only secondary to their real purpose. That is to lock in markets, stiffle competition and pidgeon hole consumers from any viable alternatives that the sponsers see as competitive and a threat to their market shares and business models.