hacking vs cracking

I have always thought abt this that why to ban hacking. it should b made legal . hacking is done with a good purpose . the purpose may be to idetifi or catch a cracker , or to find out loopholes in a site or a system , or better understanding of networking , or fighting better against spam-viruses-or crackers

its only the crackers who cracks a system 4 nobody's good. i critically say that they should b punished. but why to punish harmless hackers who doesn't harm anybody but most of the time are helpful.

let us assume (may god forbid it) that a person entered into ur system , stoled some of the important files & destroyed ur data,, or let a person released a virus which created a havoc for whole of commmunity wt would u call him ? a hacker. no! no! my frens he is a cracker

hacker is the person whoenters ur system , but steals nothing & harms nothing as he do all that 4 knowledge only..... hacker is also the person who will persue the person who released the virus , who will help to nab him.

in facto in my opinion a person could not become a true network security guard untill he know haw to break in i.e. how to hack only after that he can stop a person from cracking

(how can u piss if u don kno how to open zip?)


wt do u think abt it?

So how do you know who enters your system is there to do good? How do you a know a person's intention when they enter a system? If they say they aren't going to do harm? What about someone who enters the system, claims they aren't going to do harm, leaves all the files but copies all the credit cards?

They haven't "stolen" anything. They've merely copied a file and they were just "trying to find loopholes in the system". The seperation between the hacker and the "attacker" (I'm hesitant now to use "cracker" as someone reminded me of the derogatory nature of the term) is a fine line. Social engineering can make that line blurred.

A hacker doesn't need to "break" into someone else's system to understand things. One can simple setup an "abuse" network at home or wargames with friends. I have such a network at home and I have friends who ask me to find holes in their systems (written permission of course).

As for your last question, you can piss without opening your fly. It's messy but it can be done.

Lastly, a side comment. This is a forum. Put in the full letters of the alphabet. This isn't IM where you sometimes have limitations due to packet size.

Yack Yack Yack

Gawd what was hackers called back in the day when the pursuit of knowledge was just beggining exactly that a hacker yes most all were intelligant and took years of study to acomplish there goals and what exactly was there goals to break in to systems a cracker in my book is some one who breaks encrytion algithorims and cracks serials and such for software wether a hacker breaks in to system and steals data or rm -rf / a server or just to simply look around whether epoeple ./ or code there own sploits they still ahve a working knowledge of computer systems people say oh it isnt hard to ./ and **** but have you thought how people find vuln systems ? *going off on a tottaly diffrent rant* ( back on topic hopefully ). Think about the vast amount of exploit coders do you think they just code up sploits to release to securty focus and packet storm yea right they code them to root servers so i guess my point is a hacker whether he be a sploit coder or a dot slasher is exactly that a hacker and a cracker cracks software where did all this hacker/cracker **** start ? and how did so many people get confused about it

/* rant over */

there is only a thin boundary line between hacker & cracker & this line is only reason 4 banning hacking

How everyone misses the actual meaning of the word 'hacker' is always beyond me, I realize it has evolved, for better or worse, but true hackers were hackers before they ever learned the ins & outs of computer systems. (and this is only one type of 'hacker') On a side note, what I think I'm going to do is go around testing security on home security systems. I think it should be made legal, because all I'm doing is seeing if I can get in, pick a lock here, maybe guess some security system passwords there...I won't do any harm once I'm in though, sounds good? :D

Star****ers

Well to me this debate could go on for ever really if you think about it..
Ok firstly my opinion is that Hacking should be legal, because if you think about it, what are Sys Admins...
They now how to hack. But they use ther knowledge to Stop H4x0r5 from owning there system or Network.
But how did the Sys Admin get to be a Sys Admin...?
Well he had to learn how to hack didn't he...?
You carn't say that a Sys Admin is a Sys Admin because he learnt all the tricks of the trade just by reading programming books..
That would be inpossible, well maybe possible Today.
But i know of a few Sys Admin's that work for important company's, and they were once Hackers..
And once that they realised that they could get paid good money to be a Sys Admin they now use there knowledge to stop Hackers from gaining Root on there setups..
And even though most people here will argue with me over this, well that won't bother me, as this is my opinion.
And plus a Cracker is someone whom does something totally different to a Hacker, a Hacker looks for Vulnebility's while a Cracker will crack Games, Serials, and passwords and stuff.
So why does the Media get all this confused.???
Because they try to make something out of Myth...
A hacker is a hacker, while a cracker is a cracker.
You don't have to be smart to know what both words mean, and what the person does..
Well i could sit for hours ranting on about this subject all night.
But unfortunatly i gotta get to bed cause it's 2:07Am here in Australia, and i gotta get up early in the morning 6:AM..
As i gotta finish installing a knew Auto on my car..
So cheers
Kris

This is all about use of the English language?

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(how can u piss if u don kno how to open zip?)

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Do it in your pants son :D

"Hacker" is now a scumbag attempting illegal access; "cracker" is a scumbag attempting to circumvent the copy protection on licenced software?

So: hacker/cracker = criminal?

The English language changes :D

Good people do not change their morality?


Cheers

Ive allways done my hacing exclusivly with an axe and it was NEVER to test system security :P

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The English language changes

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Boy does it ever, It is no where the same as I learned in school, any more.
But to the point of this thread, hacking in the modern day language is wrong. A hacker is a threat to any system they should find vulnerable. Any one who enters into anothers system without permission, no matter what their intentions are, can only be considered as wrong doer in our culture today.
If you were using your laptop in a resturant, and got up to visit the bathroom, to come back and find someone you didn't even know skimming through your files......would you consider that as innocent behavior?

if you were to legalize hacking, you would have to have some clear boundry lines separating legal hacking vs illegal hacking. Like Ms.Mittens said there would be to many loopholes in somethng such as this. If you legalize hacking, then that will make people think that its fine and dandy to "hack" the CIA and find loopholes. Its all fine and great, untill a list of undercover people are released into the public.

I don't think it would ever be good to "legalize" hacking.

What your talking about with finding loopholes and such, is the same as penetration testing which is what some companies specialize in.

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Originally posted here by creative_32X_mx
Ok firstly my opinion is that Hacking should be legal, because if you think about it, what are Sys Admins...
They now how to hack. But they use ther knowledge to Stop H4x0r5 from owning there system or Network.
But how did the Sys Admin get to be a Sys Admin...?
Well he had to learn how to hack didn't he...?
You carn't say that a Sys Admin is a Sys Admin because he learnt all the tricks of the trade just by reading programming books..

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http://sageweb.sage.org/resources/pu...jobs/core.html

If you read this you will see what it takes to be a Sys Admin, from a Novice to a Senior, stating the experience and educational qualifications required.

I have no wish to get involved in the hacker / cracker arguement, but I would say that if I found an intruder in my home, should I ignore it, and give him a can of beer, because he said that " he was'nt going to steal or damage anything, but was only snooping through my personal effects just to see what was there, oh, and by the way I was doing you a favour by testing your security" I don't think so