Hacking

Stupid Boy · Aug 16, 2004

This is just a fun thing that I've been doing for about six months:

I act like I'm cracking when I'm just hacking my computer or my cousin's computer. (He lets me hack his computer because we are both computer nerds.)

I have done this to friends, teachers and family, all of whom have not known very much about computers. I think it would be really fun to do this to a person who thinks he knows a lot that he really doesn't know.

Here are some examples of what happens:

I say: "I messed up someone's GUI--'GUI' stands for graphical user interface, which is all the windows and the desktop and the icons--so he had to use the command line...."

All I did was make an error while editing my XF86Config file.

I say: "I changed someone's keyboard layout so that it wasn't the standard QWERTY layout, so most of the characters on his keyboard didn't match those that would be typed."

I changed my keyboard layout to dvorak in XF86Config.

After performing a ping of death on a PC in my house, I tell my parents, "I've pinged lots of websites."

Those pings weren't deadly.

I wasn't very skilled in Linux when I first did this, so I didn't know too much, but it was still extremely fun. It will be much more fun now because I know much more.

ThePerfectCore · Aug 16, 2004

I've freaked a few people out by leaving Uplink (a cracking simulation game) running idle on the "International Criminal Database". I guess they watched too many movies.

9mmCensor · Aug 17, 2004

ThePerfectCore said:
I've freaked a few people out by leaving Uplink (a cracking simulation game) running idle on the "International Criminal Database". I guess they watched too many movies.

That game is so fun. I love it. But not as much as FPSs...

amazon10x · Aug 17, 2004

I just downloaded the demo to that game and played it. Yumm. Now i'm gonna have to shell out 30 dollars to buy the stupid thing! Darn you perfectcore, darn you...

cack01 · Aug 17, 2004

Back when After Dark was popular, I liked to change the screen saver module to the DOS command screen saver. My 7th grade teacher walked by our classroom computer and cries "OMG what what happened to the computer? The computer only looks like that when someone puts a virus on it!!"

amazon10x · Aug 17, 2004

lol

whats after dark?

cack01 · Aug 17, 2004

amazon10x said:
lol

whats after dark?

It was a screen saver program made by Berkeley Systems. Their two most famous screen savers were the flying toasters and a skyline of a city at night.

Foxie3a · Aug 17, 2004

Before in computer class at school we would have to do MS Word documents and such, and I would go into DOS and play around...

All I'd have to do is type in something like "type Hacking System..." And whatever the option for it to keep putting that on the screen. People thought that I was godlike.

I have uplink, I never really liked it though... Didn't seem realistic(is that a bad thing?).

amazon10x · Aug 17, 2004

Yeah, when I played through the demo there was some things that I thought weren't very realistic that should be changed but you can't make it too realistic (who would buy a game where you just type away at a cmd prompt?)

ThePerfectCore · Aug 18, 2004

Uplink could be considered a $30 movie prop program.

Krusty · Aug 18, 2004

Stupid Boy said:
I act like I'm cracking when I'm just hacking my computer or my cousin's computer.

hacking: To gain access to a computer or network illegally or without authorization.

cracking: To modify a computer program in order to bypass any copy protection or otherwise alter various features.

Making a trainer for a video game is cracking. Making a no-cd patch for a video game is cracking. Turning a shareware program into a retail program is cracking.

Decrypting the key to get on a wireless network is hacking. Overwriting a buffer to execute your own program on someone elses computer is hacking. Utilizing an open port is hacking.

- - -

These may be my personal definitions, but I'm about 99% sure that those are the correct definitions for hacking and cracking. Just thought I'd let you know because that sentence really made no sense at all when I read it. I think a better way to describe it is "I act like I'm hacking when I'm really just tweaking various OS settings.

obsolete · Aug 18, 2004

Krusty, for the most part, you are right.

Eclypsyr · Aug 18, 2004

I always thought that cracking was simply a malicious form of hacking. I consider hacking just finding different ways to get around things, not necessarily illegal.

Jon

David · Aug 18, 2004

My understanding is:

Cracking: illegal access to networks and computer systems, illegal modifications to software etc.

Hacking: Making use of code for meaningful purposes. Like hacking knoppix to make your own distro.

Krusty · Aug 18, 2004

David said:
Hacking: Making use of code for meaningful purposes. Like hacking knoppix to make your own distro.

I think that happens to be an alternate definition of "hacking" that does not necessarily have to do with computers. That definition kinda comes from the whole "hack job" idea where you simply take something and modify it to do something else, usually involving a bit of ghettoness.

your definition:

I hacked up my computer case to fit a radiator on the top.
My final project for compilers was a total hack job to get the last couple of features implemented.
I'm using a hacked version of windows that integrates Mozilla into the Kernel in place of Internet Explorer (could also possibly use cracking in this case)

my definition:
I hacked into the CIA mainframe and found out that I have a twin brother that has 3 heads.
I hacked into my sisters computer with a password generator while she was gone and deleted those blackmail pictures.

As for cracking, I believe the ONLY real definition involves modifying an executable in some manner or possibly using a program to generate keys.

XWRed1 · Aug 19, 2004

I think that happens to be an alternate definition of "hacking" that does not necessarily have to do with computers. That definition kinda comes from the whole "hack job" idea where you simply take something and modify it to do something else, usually involving a bit of ghettoness.

This is what most people who call themselves hackers consider hacking to be.

All the people who work on Linux call each other hackers, for example.

People who break into systems are crackers. So are people that crack games I guess, so far as the warez community calls them that since that is all in the warez community.

What does the Wikipedia say about the verb "Hack"?

A Hack is a person lacking talent or ability, as in a "hack writer". Within the past few decades, it has also come to mean either a kludge, or the opposite of a kludge, as in a clever or elegant solution to a difficult problem. As a verb, it means creating or participating in a hack. The term word is commonly, but not exclusively, used in relation to computer programming. It is used especially among university computing center staff, such as those at MIT and Stanford in the period beginning approximately in the mid- 1960s and ending in the 1980s. Originally, a hack meant a quick fix to a computer program problem, as in "That hack you made last night to the editor is working well". A hacker came into the lexicon as meaning one who hacks after this definition. The surface implication, a modest mocking and play on the literary definition, was a casual attempt to fix the problem, but the deeper meaning was something more clever and thus impressive.

The term is still used in this sense in the technical computer community though it has since acquired an additional and now more common meaning, outside that of the original group, since approximately the 1980s. This more modern definition is associated with hacker. Sometimes the jargon used by hackers is thought of a language in its own right, called hackish.

The context determines whether the complimentary or derogatory meanings is implied. Phrases such as "ugly hack" or "quick hack" generally refer to the latter meaning; phrases such as "cool hack" or "neat hack" refer to the former.

Additionally, in MIT's particular lingo, a "hack" is an elaborate and flamboyant student prank. Past MIT hacks include:

* Covering the university's signature "Great Dome" (which seems to be something of a magnet for hacks) with tin foil
* Putting a fake (but convincing) MIT Campus Police cruiser on the Dome
* Decorating the Dome as R2D2
* Hiding the university president's office by covering its entrance with a fake bulletin board
* Inflating a huge balloon on the playing field during a Harvard-Yale football game

In a similar vein, a "hack" may refer to works outside of computer programming. For example, a math hack means a clever solution to a mathematical problem. The GNU General Public License has been described as a copyright hack.

For Palm OS users, a "hack" refers to an extension of the operating system which provides additional functionality.

The term "hack" can be used to refer to a program that (sometimes illegally) modifies another program, giving the user access to features otherwise inaccessible to him or her.

A hack can also refer to the goal of the game hacky sack; in rugby football, "hacking" is kicking an opponent in the shins; in the US hacking is the act of constructing furniture with an axe, which led to the computer-industry compliment of calling a programming effort a "hack".

They have a MUCH longer definition of the word "Hacker", here is the part pertinent to your argument:

The most common usage of "hacker" in the popular press is to describe those who subvert computer security without authorization. This can mean taking control of a remote computer through a network, or software cracking. This is the pejorative sense of hacker, also called cracker or black-hat hacker in order to preserve unambiguity.

cack01 · Aug 19, 2004

You guys are spending way too much time on this.

Anyways my old CS teacher once told me that hacker came from the word Hack. duh
He then said a "Hack" is one who is very skilled in a trade. But I have always felt that definition was wrong since I knew one of the many true definitions of a hack is a person with little education which spends his day doing boring mindless jobs.

I later found out from my computer history teacher that Hacker came from the word hack, b/c the original bug testers and debuggers in the computer industry were called Hacks; since their job was to basically stare at a screen all day. Hackers just kinda caught on.

Krusty · Aug 19, 2004

Good lord, that hacker definition was HUGE. But it pretty much all makes sense. The only thing that really caught my eye was that they referred to a person who cracks programs to be a hacker. Of course, a person that cracks a program would obviously also be called a cracker so it appears as if cracker is something of a subset of one of the definitions of hacker.

As for the definition of cracker, I looked it up there and there were two different types of definitions:

Software cracking is software hacking in order to remove encoded copy protection. Distribution of cracked software (warez) is generally an illegal (or more recently, criminal) act of copyright infringement. Software cracking is most often done by software reverse engineering.

A good example of a software crack would be a "No CD" crack, which is made by altering the program code so that the original distribution CD-ROM is no longer needed to execute the program. Another example occurs when businesses break the copy protection of programs that they have legally purchased but that are licensed to particular hardware, so that there is no risk of downtime due to hardware failure (and, of course, no need to restrict oneself to running the software on the said hardware only...).

The other definition is what I would consider to be a hacker. This definition also happens to state that a security cracker is synonomous with a hacker.

In the context of computer networking, cracking (also called black-hat hacking, or hacking) is the act of compromising the security of a system without permission from an authorized party, usually with the intent of accessing computers connected to the network ...The term 'cracker' seems to have developed from 'hacker,' with a connotation of forcibility in addition to cleverness.

Cracking techniques can vary from using advanced programming skills and social engineering to utilizing software developed by others without understanding how the cracking software works. The latter type of cracker is often referred to as a script kiddie. (Unskilled crackers are far more common than highly skilled ones.) Common software weaknesses exploited by crackers include buffer overflows and heap overflows.

So, what I would conclude from this is that hacker is a general term with multiple definitions while cracker is strictly related to defeating copy protection or security.

XWRed1 · Aug 19, 2004

I guess that's close enough.

Most people who are internet culture savvy prefer to use the positive connotation of hack/hacker/hacking, rather than the media/pop-culture ruined negative meaning.

tom10167 · Aug 19, 2004

David said:
My understanding is:

Cracking: illegal access to networks and computer systems, illegal modifications to software etc.

Hacking: Making use of code for meaningful purposes. Like hacking knoppix to make your own distro.

Of course, meaningful is a totally subjective term, depending on the person.
Example:

Sweet said:
My understanding is:
Hacking: Making use of code for meaningful purposes. Like hacking knoppix to make your own distro.

Bad guy said:
My understanding is:

Hacking: Making use of code for meaningful purposes. Like hacking your jobs payroll system to take a minimal 1% out of everyone else's check and add it to yours.

=\

Hacking

Member

Red Raccoon Dojo

Disabled

Member

Member

Member

Member

Normal Member

Member

Red Raccoon Dojo

Insane Overclocking Clown

Member

Member

Forums Super Moderator

Insane Overclocking Clown

Senior Member

Member

Insane Overclocking Clown

Senior Member

Member

Similar threads