A good example of a 'hacker' (the modern meaning).

L0pht Heavy Industries. 5 blokes (men). most or all of them were at uni.
they broke into a HUGE and very important sytem. but, they didnt. if
that made sence. they took old computers and bits from skips and bins
and things from computer companies (they were being thrown away). they
took the computers apart and fixed them and got them up and running.
their house was a mess of old computer and wires. anyway.... they got
all the information they could about a cirtain system, set it up at
their house and hacked into it. then went to the company and told them
they can get into their system. they went before the white house or
pentagon or something and told them simply 'your security isnt very
good... see?'. Lopht are hackers. they are a security company now, payed
alot to break into systems and write security tools.

http://www.l0pht.com/





-----Original Message-----
From: Brian Smith [mailto:avalon73(at)arthurian.nu]
Sent: 12 July 2000 06:42
To: Rob Atkinson
Cc: hwg-techniques(at)hwg.org
Subject: Re: Hackers


On Tue, 11 Jul 2000, Rob Atkinson wrote:

> A cracker is one who corrupts Server Security for a malicious purpose
> whereas a hacker does not? They both had to break in. 

You're obviously missing the key difference... hackers better their
skills
(which don't even have to involve computers at all) in benign ways,
while
crackers are the ones that break into systems.

Rather than have me explain it to you and miss certain details, check
out
the Jargon File: 

	http://www.fwi.uva.nl/~mes/jargon/

Look up "hacker", read carefully, then follow the link to the definition
of "cracker" and find out the difference. 

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Brian Smith  //  avalon73(at)earthling.net  //  http://www.arthurian.nu/
Software Developer  //  Gamer  //  Webmaster  //  System Administrator
Seleznick's Theory of Holistic Medicine:  Ice Cream cures all ills.

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