The hacker: an in depth look
Recently a German teen created havoc all over the world by a worm created by him, namely the Sasser worm. There have also been increased reports of hacker attacks recently. Techtree.com takes an in-depth look at the hacker.
Who is a hacker? The term 'hacker' originally developed at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA) long before computers became common; a "hack" meant a simple, but often an inelegant solution. The term hack came to refer to any clever prank perpetrated by MIT students; the perpetrator is a hacker. To this day the terms hack and hacker are used in that context at MIT, without necessarily referring to computers. Today though, the term 'hacker' has a totally different meaning to it. Among professional programmers, the term hacker implies an amateur or a programmer who lacks formal training. Depending on how it is used, the term can be either complimentary or derogatory, although it is developing an increasingly belittling connotation. The derogatory sense of hacker is becoming more prominent, largely because the press has co-opted the term to refer to individuals who gain unauthorised access to computer systems for the purpose of stealing and corrupting data. Hackers, themselves, maintain that the proper term for such individuals is 'cracker'. A cracker is an individual who indulges himself in the process of removing any sort of software enforced protection scheme from a piece of software. What's the colour of their hat? Within the hacker community, there are four distinct groups, viz. the black, white grey and blue hat hackers. Black hats: Black hat hackers are those hackers that use their "skills" to cause harm to computer users. They intend to vandalize information that belongs to others or other parties. Black hats do not observe the hacker ethic. These are the hackers responsible for controlling your PC with Trojans and creating viruses. According to Captain Raghuraman, CEO, Mahindra SSG (Special Services Group), "black hats are those individuals who hack into a system so that they can profit from the hack financially." White hats: The primary difference is that white hat hackers "claim" they observe the hacker ethic, a sort of golden rule of computing similar to: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Like black hats, white hats are often intimately familiar with the internal details of security systems, and can delve into obscure machine code when needed to find a solution to a tricky problem without requiring support from a system manufacturer. They do not profit form their hack financially. But according to Captain Raghuraman, "the white hat hacker too breaks into a PC/system; so where is the question of ethics? Grey hats: A grey hat hacker is actually a white-hat hacker who uses black-hat techniques to satisfy their employers, for whom they act as white-hat. Blue hats: These are the new breed of hackers who, according to Captain Raghuraman, have the permission, mandate and knowledge to hack. A recent example would be of the four software programmers who have joined the Mumbai Cyber Crime Cell and are rendering their services for free. What's the hacker ethic? The hacker ethic refers to the ethical ideas this community of people have -- that knowledge should be shared with other people who can benefit from it, and that important resources should be utilized rather than wasted. The hacker ethic can be summed up in two points: -The belief that information-sharing is a powerful positive good and that it is the ethical duty of hackers to share their expertise by writing open-source and facilitating access to information and to computing resources wherever possible. -The belief that system cracking for fun and exploration is ethically OK as long as the cracker commits no theft, vandalism, or breach of confidentiality. Both of these normative ethical principles are widely, but by no means universally, accepted among hackers. Most hackers subscribe to the hacker ethic in the first point and many act on it by writing and giving away open-source software. A few go a step further and assert that all information should be free and any proprietary control of it is bad. The second point is much more polite. On this view, it may be one of the highest forms of hackerly courtesy to (a) break into a system, and then (b) explain to the system operator, preferably by email from a 'super' user account, exactly how it was done and how the hole can be plugged. This point of the hacker ethic is followed by diligently by a very small group of hackers. But how can "ethics" exist when these hackers, no matter what hat they wear, bar the blue hats, get into a system without the knowledge of the PC/system user. How do these people become hackers? There are many sites that provide the perfect launch pad to become, or rather develop into a hacker. But most hackers usually have a very strong base in computer programming and they know their computer and in many cases, the computers that belong to others, very well. It's also up to them to choose to become a black, white, grey or blue hat hacker.
Reproduced from an article published by TechTree
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