*The Creators*


A thought i had that i wanted to share...
Hacker; the definition has become somewhat misconstrued over time. The definition used to be 
a coder using computer and programming skills to get a machine or a piece of software to do 
something, anything, that it was not origionally intended to do. What is the definition today? 
I'll get there.

A theory that many analysts and onlookers of the 'underground' situation have is that many 
'hackers' are power-addicts, that they feel impowered by the evil that they could do, at 
their whim. It has also been said that hackers are scared. They chose to hide behind a 
handle and a proxy and remotely give arbitrary commands to a computer half-way around the 
world, and this makes them cowards. 

I do not share in either of these theories. Though it gets media attention, evil done by 
hackers takes a lot less skill than for hackers to do good. Most people would ask why 
hackers would do evil then; it doesn't demonstrate their skill. There are many answers 
to that question. The most obvious answer is the media attention. Like it or not, there 
is a certain degree of fame and glory that goes along with defacing a website and writing 
your handle on it. Magnatudes of people see your message (if any) as well as your name, 
and you gain a recognition in the underground. However, this recognition is entirely too 
small for these type of 'hackers,' which is why they perpetrate many defacements. Another 
answer is that some hackers doing evil are using tools that they did not create and do not 
understand, and doing something like patching a hole would be far too difficult for them to 
understand, or they are just too lazy. These answers have less to do with cowardness or malicious 
intent than with wanting to be recognized. In either case, the person should under no circumstances 
be labled a hacker. If they don't have the skill to fix penetrated systems (patch holes, get rid of bugs), 
then they should not be penetrating them. If they just do not have the ambition to fix the penetrated system, 
then they do not have the mindset of a true hacker. 

What is the mindset of a real hacker? It is one of the hardest things that i have ever tried to describe. 
It is about ninety nine percent curiosity. A real hacker does not hack things to steal, destroy, or misuse,
a real hacker hacks things to learn about new systems or software that they do not normally have the ability 
to explore for economic or otherwise reasons. A real hacker would rather explore faster and better technological 
systems, than destroy or misuse these systems and lose the abilty to use them. If a real hacker finds a flaw in 
one of these systems, they would patch it to make that system stronger, rather than exploiting it. 
True hackers are always demanding that systems are more secure, and that technology advances. 
They do this not through breaking current technology, but through fixing it. By finding and fixing a 
hole in a piece of software, a hacker makes the company that prodouced that software look stupid in a sense. 
Because of this, that company is less likely to allow flaws to slip through the cracks in their future products. 
If you look at this from the right point of view, hackers are what push technology forward. Without somone 
finding problems in a current form of technology, what reason would we have to make technology better? 
What is the true definition of a hacker? A creator, and an inspiration for other people (companies) to create. 
Hackers, not software engineers are what make technology continue to ascend to new levels. 

--TeRM--