What Do Ordinary People Think a Hacker Is?
by Kim Crawley
Once a few years ago, I purchased an issue of 2600 at my local Chapters bookstore. Later that day, I was in a car with my friend and his boss, both of whom work in the financial services industry. Neither my friend nor his boss had much knowledge of computing culture.
"I really like this new issue of 2600 I just bought," I said. My friend's boss was curious.
"Let me see that," she said. I handed it to her, because she was in another passenger seat. (Never hand someone a magazine while they're driving, kids!)
"The Hacker Quarterly?" she exclaimed. "How is it legal for a bookstore to sell something like this?"
"This magazine has lots of great articles about interesting things that can be done with technology. What's so illegal about that?" I replied.
I'm an information security researcher. That's what CIO Magazine says I am, so I've decided to accept that. Most of my work involves writing thoroughly researched articles about IT security. The rest of my work involves writing and editing study material for the InfoSec Institute's CISSP and Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH) training programs.
Thousands of people in IT security read my work. But I'm also read by people in other areas of IT, and I assume the odd layperson stumbles upon my work as well.
One of my favorite books of all time is Steven Levy's Hackers. Steve Wozniak, Richard Stallman, Richard Greenblatt, Marvin Minsky, Linus Torvalds, Lee Felsenstein, and Bjarne Stroustrup are some of my heroes. I wish I could have been at MIT during the PDP era, or even a member of the Homebrew Computer Club. But as a Canadian born in 1984, I missed that opportunity.
Ask an ordinary person what a hacker is, and they'll either think of that Angelina Jolie movie, Lisbeth Salander from Stieg Larsson's novels, or some sociopath who penetrates a big corporation's computer network with the purpose of wreaking havoc. Anonymous and other hacktivists have been in the news in the past several years, as well. So you and I know the words "white hat" and "black hat," but Joe Blow thinks all hackers are black hats.
Heck, it gets worse than that. I've found people in other areas of IT with the same misconception. Even the IT security articles that other people write that I edit use the word "hacker" interchangeably with "cracker" or "black hat."
The International Council of E-Commerce Consultants (EC-Council for short) administrates the CEH certification. On their website, the phrase "Hackers are here. Where are you?" can be prominently seen. The CEH covers the basic knowledge that's needed to be a penetration tester. They emphasize the phrase "ethical hacker," because in their language, the word "hacker" alone means someone an IT department needs to watch out for. I write study material for people who write the exam! I've got to cover what's on it. I do what I can.
My late father was a popular novelist. He raised me to have immense appreciation for the power of words.
Think of how the media, marketers, politicians, and cult leaders manipulate the power of language for their own ends. George Orwell inspired the term "doublespeak." We see his fiction replicated in reality. "Used cars" become "pre-owned vehicles." The "Department of Homeland Security" makes Americans less secure in their "homeland." "Dolls" can't be sold to little boys, but "action figures" can be. "This isn't a comic book, it's a graphic novel!" Here in Canada, Prime Minister Stephen Harper's "Fair Elections Act" makes elections unfair. Once a month, I need to use "feminine hygiene products," but I'd rather call them "menstrual blood pluggers," dammit!
I'm an avid gamer, so don't even get me started on "Digital Rights Management."
In the CISSP and CEH study material I write, and in my magazine articles, I insist on calling a hacker with malicious intent an attacker, or a cracker, or a black hat.
I'm doing everything I can to maintain and promote Steven Levy's use of the word "hacker."
If I can influence more people in IT and tech journalism, I can make life easier for those of us who like to mod video games, or tinker with open-source scripting, or who do cool stuff with Raspberry Pi and Arduino boards.
I strongly believe that if we continue to let "non-hackers" think all hacking is black hat, then the Silicon Valley billionaires win. They benefit immensely from the work hackers have done in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. Now they get to reap their profits from overworked and underpaid computer programmers. With that money, they get to kill hacker innovation by spending big bucks on patent trolling. It makes my blood boil.
I'm pretty much exactly as old as 2600 Magazine. I was born just a few months before (((Mark Zuckerberg))). There's hope for the future. As I said, I do what I can.