Hacker Versus Cracker

work hard & thinking!

Kata “hacker” sering digunakan dalam pengertian yang merendahkan oleh para jurnalis dengan jumlah yang sangat besar. Beberapa orang berpikir hal ini sangat beralasan; beberapa orang menemukan hal ini sebagai offensive, dan merekomendasikan sebuah istilah alternatif untuk pengertian tersebut. Baca selanjutnya untuk tahu mengapa.

Dalam mainstream pers, kata “hacker”sering digunakan untuk merujuk tambalan security yang dilakukan cracker. Ada definisi klasik dari istilah “hacker”, yang timbul dari informasi dan teknologi pada MIT, kadang-kadang agak ceroboh dalam penggunaan istilah tersebut oleh jurnalist dan orang lain yang terpengaruh pada ketidakakuratan jurnalistik.

Beberapa menyatakan bahwa istilah tersebut sudah rusak dan tidak dapat diperbaiki, dan kata definisi baru tersebut harus diterima. Pendekatan deskriptif adalah prediksi yang berdasarkan asumsi bahwa tidak ada alasan yan jelas untuk mengkomunikasikan nya dengan efektif dengan pemikiran yang teknis tanpa mengetahui mengetahui aspek non teknis dari penggunaan istilah “hacker”. Saya percaya bahwa adalah masih berguna untuk membedakan antara hacker dan security cracker, meskipun istilah tersebut menyerupai “malicious security cracker”yang cukup menggugah dan jelas bahwa penggunaannya adalah membantu menjadikan komunikasi menjadi lebih efektif daripada para jurnalisme padanya yang salah kaprah tentang penggunaan istilah “hacker”.

I think it’s useful to differentiate especially because there are many situations where “hack”, and its conjugations, is the only effective term to describe something that has nothing to do with malicious violation of security measures or privacy. When you simply accept that “hacker” means “malicious security cracker”, you give up the ability to use the term to refer to anything else without potential confusion.

Both are distinct from people whose interest in technical matters is purely professional, with no desire to learn anything about the subject at hand other than to advance a career and make a living. Many hackers and security crackers turn their talents toward professional ends, of course, and some security crackers got where they are only through professional advancement, but one definitely need not have a professional interest to pursue the path of either a hacker or a security cracker.

A hacker, in the classic sense of the term, is someone with a strong interest in how things work, who likes to tinker and create and modify things for the enjoyment of doing so. For some, it is a compulsion, while for others it is a means to an end that may lead them to greater understanding of something else entirely. The RFC 1392: Internet Users’ Glossary defines “hacker” as:

A person who delights in having an intimate understanding of the
internal workings of a system, computers and computer networks in
particular. The term is often misused in a pejorative context,
where “cracker” would be the correct term. See also: cracker.

The Jargon Wiki’s first definition for hacker says:

A person who enjoys exploring the details of programmable systems and how to stretch their capabilities, as opposed to most users, who prefer to learn only the minimum necessary.

A security cracker, meanwhile, is someone whose purpose is to circumvent or break security measures. Some security crackers end up using their powers for good, providing penetration testing services or otherwise making efforts on the side of the angels. Many others use their powers for evil, however, as we are all too painfully aware. Both RFC 1392 and the Jargon Wiki provide definitions of “cracker” that support this use of the term.

Maintaining distinct terms for distinct phenomena is an important aspect of communication, as demonstrated in the incident I described in Managers and technologists live in different worlds, where a company executive and I used the same term to refer to two different things and failed to communicate effectively as a result. When two different phenomena acquire the same label, as in the case of hackers in the classic sense on one hand and malicious security crackers on the other, either something has to give or discussion is bound to suffer from confusion that could easily have been avoided.

The more easily relabeled of the two uses of the term “hacker” is the malicious security cracker: it is not only the more recent phenomenon to acquire that label, but also the one whose meaning is most easily evoked by an alternative term. This is why, when you read an article of mine that talks about malicious security crackers, I use the term “malicious security cracker” — and in an article that talks about hackers in the classic sense of the term, I try to differentiate clearly between these two uses of the term “hacker” before using it myself.

work hard & thinking!

Hacker Versus Cracker

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Cari

Recent Comments

Categories

Tags

Partners

Recent Posts

Follow Us on Facebook

Services