Some people who are very good at computers. Some offenders who are skirting computer network security applications and stealing data. Thieves who steal money on the internet. There are some of the hacker's popular definitions, definitions that reflect the views of the world about these ninjas of the internet world, capable of penetrating into the best-kept networks and taking what they want - data, money - or leaving where they want, such as malicious programs. Controversies related to the definition of the term and classification attempts mirror the complexity of the problem, but also the desire to place order in a dark, secret, disturbing and unknown world.
Sign of the times - of those times when the internet is largely driven by human life - the world of hackers, at first clandestine, tends to come to light. More than a community, hackers have become a true subculture, with its own conception and way of life, with rules and customs, with its history and personalities of this history.
Like thieves armed with legendary grass of beasts, unlocking any locks, hackers are both frightened and fascinating. But, if the familiar definitions show what the world thinks about themselves, what they think of themselves?
First of all, one important thing needs to be clarified: there is a controversy over the definition of the term, the use of the notion of hacker, a controversy that, like many others, puts into play the difference between what the world thinks and thinks really involved in such activities.
Very often, the term, in the usual sense, has a negative connotation: the hacker is associated with fraud, crime, cybercrime. Such an association can not convince those who, although they could, do not deal with crime - honest hackers, to tell them.
Hacker is, in the broadest sense of the term, an expert. No one gets hacker if it's not a computer hack. But one is to be defined as a computer expert (a characterization that honors everyone), and another is to be seen as a computer expert doing illegal things.
Hostile hackers often insist on the degradation of the meaning of the term hacker, by using it with reference to program burglars, and the need to find another term for computer criminals, also versed in the matter, of course, but whose intent (and deeds) they are not so honest. Such individuals should be called crackers, I believe ethical hackers.
Good hacker, bad cracker
Unfortunately, the definition of hacker as a computer-savvy individual who uses his skill to do various damnation has caught on to the public, damaging the hackers in the camp of good boys, who have seen themselves put in the same pot with computer villains. Hacker has, unfortunately, remained in familiar language the term by which an malicious computer expert is appointed and who is not allowed to break the law with his abilities. Sad, but that's it.
In order to correct the mistaken impression given by a definition that has been taken away, hacker classifications have emerged - another proof that we are already talking about a true subculture evolving, differentiating and becoming more complex.
White hat hackers are "good" hackers, honest hackers, ethical hackers, operating on an informal ethical code, and who, thanks to their skills, are involved in developing security of computer systems or even in combating fraud computer-aided, sometimes employed by government organizations or large IT firms. They sometimes break passwords and enter the computer systems (head or contract), but without damaging them; signals system deficiencies to the owners and proposes remediation solutions (eventually implementing them).
At their antipode there are black hat hackers (like a "black hat"), or crackers, criminals, bad boys who break the accounts and steal money. (People, when they talk about hackers and their crimes, these black hat / crackers hackers actually think).
As in any other way, there are some gray hackers who break vulnerable systems, then telling the administrators that they "hacked" the network and offered to repair the damage in exchange a sum of money.
Then there are the so-called blue hat, computer scientists who attack the systems from outside, before putting them into operation, for a useful purpose - to detect the problems and solve them so that they can strengthen their security, leaving as long as possible few access routes vulnerable to attacks.
A special category is hacking (a term resulting from the counterfeiting of hacker + activist words), which infiltrates computer systems to promote their ideas, conceptions - a type of social activism or politically motivated, exploited by illegal exploitation of the immense possibilities offered by the internet.
Unfortunately for ethical hackers, the use of the term hacker to designate an informer malicious, a malicious programmer, has become widespread in Romanian, and it is unlikely that this will change. At least in the space of this article, let us refer, however, to the "wicked" with the term "cracker", even if there are no good chances for others to follow our example.
What can crackers do? Unfortunately, a lot of bad things: intercepting confidential data transmissions, erasing or modifying data, interventions in using computer-controlled devices ... It sounds very technical and maybe not very threatening, but when we find out that such activities can translate in theft of money, identity theft, sexual exploitation, etc., things start to become unsettling.
By gaining access to confidential information (for example, credit card numbers), crackers can clear the bank accounts or use the information thus obtained for blackmail; can harass or defy ordinary, defenseless people; violating other users' computers, can use them for all kinds of illegal activities, including pornography, for the purpose of personal financial gain.
Unfortunately, for us all, crackers are a category of criminals with a great influence in the current world.
Infiltration into information systems to carry out personal actions in violation of laws has become an important component of the criminal phenomenon as a whole. It is impossible to estimate the extent of the damage caused by this type of crime, but the consequences are extremely serious. Even though statistics or specialist papers are described as general phenomena, referring to anonymous groups of people, people are always affected; As a result of crackdowns, human beings suffer. Behind the phrase "identity theft", there are real people who find themselves destitute of everything, even their name and reputation; Behind the phrase "child pornography" are the exploited children who will wear their traumas all their lives.
Some crackers work on a large scale: sometimes they participate in industrial or military espionage, causing seizures that can dangerously degenerate; sometimes they can attack entire companies, damaging the interests of thousands of consumers at once, when the company's services become unavailable due to cyber attacks.
There are few methods of fighting: strengthening the security of IT systems and a more rigorous approach to the phenomenon from the point of view of its criminal nature. It is a difficult struggle in which judges and policemen will need the competition of real computer experts to win the battle.