Originally posted here by Fabs
The term "Hacker" originated in MIT as a reference for people who were adept at programming and computers and were known for pushing computers beyond their the limits of how far they were expected to go.
However in my mind a Hacker is any white/grey/black hat who can break into computers.
a Cracker is a black hat or someone into breaking warez copy protection.
[Old Man Rant]

This is probably where all of this confusion started, Replace MIT programmers with Model rail road club of the 50's and replace adept programming with electronics whiz and you have the MIT origin of the term (this stayed very obscure and seems to transfer over to spaghetti coders read bad programming at MIT during the 60's/70's) This seems to have died out there before the 80's (but may have stayed alive in the mind of on RMS..hes the source of all the trouble). Independently in the early 80's both the teens playing with modems and they guys trying to keep them out of systems coined the term "to hack” to mean an attempt to break into a system over a modem (you beat on a system looking for holes, similar to hacking at a door with an ax..most early intrusions where brute force or dumb luck) and so the term Hacker in a security sense was born, a Hacker is someone who hacks at a system in an attempt to find a way in.

Now in the 90's with the explosion of the net and Linux one RMS got some popularity and tried to revive the old MIT meaning of the word (it had been long dead and forgotten) With the help of some USNET groups and /. he has been somewhat successful in the geek community but has failed else where.

As some one who was on both sides of the early hacking world I think this is very unfortunate that the Linux geeks claim the media has stolen the word "hacker"..it wasn't the media that first used it in a security context. We used it in our culture independent of the bad programmers, and as the term died in the programming culture but stayed alive in the security culture thus it should be the current definition.

It is also interesting to note that "Cracker" has always had a bad connotation, originally it was "oh he’s just a cracker" meaning that the person just broke copy protection on programs and pirated software.


Also note that 133t speak didn't originate with the hackers of the 80's, but with the ANSI art clans (who where basically script kiddies who could draw pictures with letters...they thought that this made them hardcore hackers). That is something that has at least stayed true, it was used by the posers of the 80's and now its used by the posers of today.

Man I miss the BBS days, come back Rusty and Edie

So ends the history lesson

[/Old Man Rant]