Posted: Thu Jul 17, 2003 8:37 pm
First of all, I tried the forum search, but didn't find anything about this. Hopefully a topic similar to this doesn't already exist without me noticing.
Second: I beg for your patience. This is going to be a longer post, and there may be mistakes in spelling and grammar, which shouldn't concern you, for English is not my native tongue.
Now let's get to the point.
After playing Uplink for a while, I got extremely curious about the techniques and possibilities of "real" hacking - not that I want to try it out for myself. I have no intention to become a hacker, cracker, script kiddie or whatever. I'm just interested in IT security.
So I went to Google™ and searched for information about hacking, but couldn't find anything usefull. Very well, I proceeded to Google Groups™. And while reading a posting at alt.hack, I stumbled over the somewhat enlightening FAQ "How to become a hacker", by Eric Steven Raymond.
If you didn't already know it, I recommend to take a close look at it: http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html
After this lecture, I found myself extremely baffled. According to the FAQ, to become a hacker you need to...
1) ...love to solve problems, esspecially those that had never been solved before.
2) ...be a good programmer.
3) ...have a strong attitude for freedom and be against censorship and the likes, but not loathe any kind of authority in general.
4) ...share your work with others, to gain status in the so-called "Hacker Culture".
5) ...not hide yourself behind nicknames or pseudonymes.
That's it. Not even a single word about breaking into other people's systems, code cracking, website defacement, theft and/or destruction of data, manipulating records and the like.
Why not? Because none of these actions is suitable for a hacker. These things are done by crackers, not hackers. As most people, I only knew the term "hacking" referring to computer fraud. And I was really surprised to learn that being a hacker has nothing to do with crime, but with creativity and an open mind.
Uplink is a game about cracking, not hacking. If someone breaks into a Microsoft server and steals part of the Windows source code (yes, I know this really happend... muhahaha!), it's cracking - not hacking. Only a few people (mostly the "true" hackers themselves) seem to know about this difference. Not really a big surprise, if you remember how the word "hacking" is misused by the media, by movies and novels, even by experienced security experts (often without knowing that "cracking" is the word they are supposed to use instead).
How could this happen, I wonder, if all the "real" hackers out there, the honourable members of the Hacking Community, who built the internet, who contributed to the creation and development of Unix and Linux, who made Open Source what it is now - if they have no intention to harm anyone (or anyone's data), and never had?
How do they feel if they read about the crimes and frauds the so-called "hackers" commited? Missunderstood, angry, or perhaps deeply sad?
Let me know what you think about it (again: only if this hadn't been discussed before in these forums ^^), and if you already knew the surprising means of "true hacking" - or if you thought that "Break into a rival computer system and steal research data" is exactly what "hacking" should be (like I did). Maybe there are members of this famous "Hacker Culture" around? (Hey, wouldn't that be great... but somewhat unlikely for them, if I think about it. )
(Edited by Liquid Data at 9:38 pm on July 17, 2003)
Second: I beg for your patience. This is going to be a longer post, and there may be mistakes in spelling and grammar, which shouldn't concern you, for English is not my native tongue.
Now let's get to the point.
After playing Uplink for a while, I got extremely curious about the techniques and possibilities of "real" hacking - not that I want to try it out for myself. I have no intention to become a hacker, cracker, script kiddie or whatever. I'm just interested in IT security.
So I went to Google™ and searched for information about hacking, but couldn't find anything usefull. Very well, I proceeded to Google Groups™. And while reading a posting at alt.hack, I stumbled over the somewhat enlightening FAQ "How to become a hacker", by Eric Steven Raymond.
If you didn't already know it, I recommend to take a close look at it: http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html
After this lecture, I found myself extremely baffled. According to the FAQ, to become a hacker you need to...
1) ...love to solve problems, esspecially those that had never been solved before.
2) ...be a good programmer.
3) ...have a strong attitude for freedom and be against censorship and the likes, but not loathe any kind of authority in general.
4) ...share your work with others, to gain status in the so-called "Hacker Culture".
5) ...not hide yourself behind nicknames or pseudonymes.
That's it. Not even a single word about breaking into other people's systems, code cracking, website defacement, theft and/or destruction of data, manipulating records and the like.
Why not? Because none of these actions is suitable for a hacker. These things are done by crackers, not hackers. As most people, I only knew the term "hacking" referring to computer fraud. And I was really surprised to learn that being a hacker has nothing to do with crime, but with creativity and an open mind.
Uplink is a game about cracking, not hacking. If someone breaks into a Microsoft server and steals part of the Windows source code (yes, I know this really happend... muhahaha!), it's cracking - not hacking. Only a few people (mostly the "true" hackers themselves) seem to know about this difference. Not really a big surprise, if you remember how the word "hacking" is misused by the media, by movies and novels, even by experienced security experts (often without knowing that "cracking" is the word they are supposed to use instead).
How could this happen, I wonder, if all the "real" hackers out there, the honourable members of the Hacking Community, who built the internet, who contributed to the creation and development of Unix and Linux, who made Open Source what it is now - if they have no intention to harm anyone (or anyone's data), and never had?
How do they feel if they read about the crimes and frauds the so-called "hackers" commited? Missunderstood, angry, or perhaps deeply sad?
Let me know what you think about it (again: only if this hadn't been discussed before in these forums ^^), and if you already knew the surprising means of "true hacking" - or if you thought that "Break into a rival computer system and steal research data" is exactly what "hacking" should be (like I did). Maybe there are members of this famous "Hacker Culture" around? (Hey, wouldn't that be great... but somewhat unlikely for them, if I think about it. )
(Edited by Liquid Data at 9:38 pm on July 17, 2003)