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What is a Hacker? 

 

a hacker is any skilled computer expert that uses their technical knowledge to overcome a problem. While "hacker" can refer to any computer programmer the term has become associated in popular culture with a "security hacker", someone who, with their technical knowledge, uses bugs or exploits to break into computer systems.

 

Types of hackers

 

Security Hacker: People involved with circumvention of computer security.

 

White Hats: are hackers employed with the efforts of keeping data safe from other hackers by looking for loopholes and hackable areas. This type of hacker typically gets paid quite well, and receives no jail time due to the consent of the company that hired them.

 

Grey Hats: are hackers who are neither good nor bad, and often include people who hack 'for fun' or to 'troll'. They may both fix and exploit, though grey hats are usually associated with black hats hackers.

 

Black Hats: or crackers are hackers with malicious intentions, and steal, exploit, and sell data. They are usually motivated by personal gain. A cracker is someone who knows the web similar to hackers and doesn't use the internet for gaining any extensive knowledge and are professionals in what they do but they are not the white collar heroes as security hackers are. Crackers use their skills to earn themselves profits or to benefit from criminal gain. Crackers find exploits to systems securities and vulnerabilities but often use them to their advantage by either selling the fix to the company themselves or keeping the exploit and selling it to other black hat hackers to steal information or gain royalties.

 

Hacker ethic

is a term for the moral values and philosophy that are common in hacker culture. In other words, those who possess positive hacker ethic acknowledge that sharing information and data responsibly is very beneficial and helpful. Whilst the philosophy originated at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.in the 1950s-1960s, the term hacker ethic is attributed to journalist Steven Levy as described in his 1984 book titled Hackers: Heroes of the computer Revolution The key points within this ethic are access, freedom of information, and improvement to quality of life. While some tenets of hacker ethic were described in other texts like Computer Lib/Dream Machines (1974) by Ted Nelson, Levy appears to have been the first to document both the philosophy and the founders of the philosophy.

 

Hacker culture

is a subculture of individuals who enjoy the intellectual challenge of creatively overcoming limitations of software systems to achieve novel and clever outcomes.The act of engaging in activities (such as programming or other media) in a spirit of playfulness and exploration is termed "hacking". However, the defining characteristic of a hacker is not the activities performed themselves (e.g. programming), but the manner in which it is done and whether it is something exciting and meaningful. Activities of playful cleverness can be said to have "hack value" and therefore the term "hacks" came about, with early examples including Pranks at MIT done by students to demonstrate their technical aptitude and cleverness. Therefore, the hacker culture originally emerged in academia in the 1960s around the Massachusetts institute of technology (MIT)'s Tech Model Railroad Club (TMRC) and MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory

 

 

 

Reference:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker      

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_ethic

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_culture

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzC6BONJgsQ from tinkernut