Originally posted here by pakbehl
This sounds like an article written by some angry journalist who got a huge credit card bill because he gave it to the wrong unsecured porno site. I can certainly understand somebody's anger at being devastated and emotionally destructed, I've had my things stolen, I've had to deal with virii, but do I write an article that generalizes every single person who ever wrote a virus, sent spam, ran a scam, ripped off the life savings of little old ladies, and found every "parent's" online bank account and called them all "hackers". I will most certainly agree whole heartedly that anyone who would do these terrible things are incredible jerks and should be made to feel what they inflict on others, but I've said 19million times before and I'll say it again these people are not hackers, they are cyber criminals, or whatever kind of criminal you want to call them. I am so sick of constantly arguing with people over the definition of 'hacker'. There are massive groups of law-abiding, tax-paying, PTA attending, hard working, proffesional people in the world that consider themselves hackers and make it known to others that this does not imply that they do anything illegal whatsoever. Yet over and over the media blatantly and rudely demonizes "hackers" and attaches that word to the worst kind of cyber*****s there are.
He speaks up for people who feel the effects of identity theft and the like ever day
Well I and millions of others like me are standing up for peaceful hackers who have to deal with the outrageous terroristic connotations that *random explitive* journalists like him perpetuate without a second thought.

Just thought I'd complain...
Well, I like your style.

I have had the same arguement over the past 15 years that I've all but given up trying to educate people on the difference between a "hacker" and a cyber-criminal.

The original hacker was someone who simply wanted to learn everything they could about a particular computer system/operating system. For example Unix, Windows or DOS.

A cyber criminal, on the other hand, is someone who deleiberately damages, destroys, or steals from a computer network, PC or other information system that they have managed to gain access to.

Are people who write computer viruses (or is it virii) hackers or criminals? Well, it depends on what they wrote it for. If it was to learn how to counter them by learning how they are (or can be) made, then I would classify them as a hacker. If they do so to deliberately infect other systems or cause damage to those systems, then I consider them criminals. After all, I have written my share of computer viruses and have been fortunate that none have ever gotten into "the wild." But they were written in order to learn the different means and ways that they could be "built" so that I could develope means and ways of getting rid of them with little to no loss of data. Or they were written to learn how to recover from them if they DID manage to deliver their "payload" and wipe my data.

Are people who break into other systems hackers or criminals? Again it depends on their motivation: to learn - hacker; to damage or steal - criminal.

The tired old usage of Hacker = criminal is not only unfair to those people who originated the term, but unfair to those who look up to them and want to learn just like they did.

Hacking, phreaking, blue-boxing, etc... Why consider andrelegate those people to the unsavory label of criminal by misusing the term that applies to them; the title of "Hacker"?

Just my 2 cents. Anyone is free to disagree, but at least disagree based on experience and facts, not media hype.

Carenath (Archangel)