On Mar 13, 2014, at 11:08 AM, William Herrin <bill@herrin.us> wrote:
On Thu, Mar 13, 2014 at 10:13 AM, <Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu> wrote:
On Thu, 13 Mar 2014 13:22:40 -0000, "Sholes, Joshua" said:
If one came up in this field with a mentor who was old school, or if one is old school oneself, one tends use the original (as I understand it) definitions--a "cracker" breaks security or obtains data unlawfully, a "hacker" is someone who likes ethically playing (in the "joyful exploration" sense) with complicated systems.
For the old-schoolers, a "cracker" would violate the CFAA to get into a system.
A hacker would produce a long list of ways to get in without violating the CFAA.
Unfortunately, we no longer have a well-established word for the latter class of people.
You're all talkin' 1990s redefinitions here. 1980s crackers cracked the copy protections on software (DRM in modern parlance) while hackers broke in to online systems. Even that is a redefinition. Before that, hackers were anyone who jovially pranked a system in a manner typically unlawful which involved creativity and technical challenge.
For example, "hackers" might arrange for live cattle to appear on the top of the great dome at MIT.
Regards, Bill Herrin
And Bill documents yet another redefinition. Prior to that time, at MIT a “hacker” produced a novel variation of technology using it in ways not previously envisioned but not necessarily unlawful. Mating two different generations of telephone keysets or reducing a complex rack mount filter to a single small circuit board with an FET or two are just a couple of examples. One was just a “hack”, the other an “elegant hack”. We just called the moving of the rocket a “prank”. Cutler