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
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 :) 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.