The evolution of the word hacker

[muyongshi]

I would think of a light skinned brother who spent to much time in the sun

But that is what I think about everytime I hear the word cracker....Me!

[Heike]

imron,

My original purpose was to try to get people away from using the term Honker, which I think is pretty much the case now. As for the difference between what a cracker does and a hacker, I'll leave that to the IT community. What I have found is that it doesn't seem to matter what color they call themselves (Red, White, Black, Blue hats) some element within that group breaks into computers other than their own.

[Heike]

If any of you guys/gals are interested, I have added a Chinese hacker glossary. Tried to add it here but too much editing for my html skills. As you can see I am not a hacker. The terms are fairly hard to find, don't even know what some of them mean in English. It was taken from a Chinese hacker website, Hack Base.

[shanghaikai]

This is probably one of the most random threads to have popped up on this forum in quite awhile. Out of the blue. Straight from right field. Whack-a-mole style. Where's the beer icon?

[renzhe]

So actually, going by the correct definition of the word hacker, a better name for this would be Red Crackers, because hackers don't engage in malicious activity.

I've always understood "hacker" to be a neutral term. Hackers can be malicious. Hackers who specialise in cracking system security are called "crackers" and are often malicious. But even crackers can be divided into "white hat" and "black hat" hackers. The white hats crack systems in order to fix vulnerabilities, black hats do the same in order to exploit them.

The problem is when people assume that all hackers are malicious, when the majority obviously aren't. A person who breaks into computer systems is a hacker, but the person who fixes their amplifier armed with a circuit diagram and a soldering iron is also a hacker, as is the guy fixing bugs in the Linux kernel.