Several subgroups of the computer underground with different attitudes and aims use different terms to demarcate themselves from each other, or try to exclude some specific group with which they do not agree. Eric S. Raymond advocates that members of the computer underground should be called crackers. Yet, those people see themselves as hackers and even try to include the views of Raymond in what they see as one wider hacker culture, a view harshly rejected by Raymond himself. Instead of a hacker – cracker dichotomy, they give more emphasis to a spectrum of different categories, such as white hat (“ethical hacking”), grey hat, black hat and script kiddie. In contrast to Raymond, they usually reserve the term cracker to refer to black hat hackers, or more generally hackers with unlawful intentions.

Goto: Wikipedia.

Is that any NY photo? I have plenty of those.

perlmunky on Mar 9 2009, 02:04 PM said:

That's a very good topic perlmunk....is there anything ethical about "hacking"? (but perhaps in the philosophy section.).....and since I'm only partially correct about the "cracking"..I guess you're just a part-time cracker...oh, and any NY photo will do...don't you have the one beside George W? or Batman......

For me a cracker is something edible.

hobglobin on Mar 9 2009, 05:09 PM said:

and you crack us up....

How would you feel if someone hacked your favorite web forum through a web chat interface? Now if that person discovered a potential exploit and informed the site admin before anyone else discovered the same fault, then that would be a good thing. How about instead of that they started doing naughty things?

Yes, there is very much an ethical hacker movement - consider Anonymous and their campaign against the cult of scientology. They fall under the umbrella of hacktivism. Geeks have power on the web

perlmunky on Mar 9 2009, 06:34 PM said:

And with such power comes great responsibility or a great potential for abuse. Can I just ask perlmunk...how does this hypothetical someone discover this hypothetical potential exploit- by accident or because he was really looking for "it" or some such similar stuff? And if he is actually looking for it, the next question is why....compulsion, obsession, altruism, boredom, insomnia etc...and as you had demonstrated, he could've gone either way. So if you have a real "movement", who gets to decide which way to go?

And can this hactivism, this white hat hacker movement balance out the existence of these evil black hat crackers? Thanks perlmunk for all these info. It's a good thing that I'm not a scientologist...you geeks are kinda scary...

:)Thanks, bioforum, for moving this topic from the Suggestion subforum ...I was gonna "suggest" it myself......sorry for the direction it had taken....hey perlmunk, we can continue this interesting discussion here (tho this shld probably be in the philosophy section) ...you started it, geek ....

casandra

Depends on the kind of person... lets pretend that this person was looking for something to do because they were bored - certainly not altruistic.
As far as direction, I would have thought that you get people joining together under a particular project, you only join that project because of x. IF you aren't interested in x then you don't join. If you join x you had velocity to the project - white, black to otherwise.

I am sure I could construct something more logical if I got some sleep.

perlmunky on Mar 11 2009, 05:48 PM said:

You can construct something while you sleep..very impressive perlmunk ..but I do get your point... I think so, or hope so, maybe, if you'd just, perhaps...hmm...get some sleep dude..so we can make heads and tails of what you've just posted....

No ... I won't sleep until I have got a computational/mathematical biochemistry postdoc position.

hack hack hacky hack.