Hacking & Hackers

Most people think of hackers as super-intelligent science geeks who illegally break into computers and steal information. Although this type of activity represents one small aspect of what some hackers actually do, it fails to convey the spirit and intent of hacking and the motivations that impel people to do it. Bona fide hackers are not destructive, so they do not destroy or damage valuable data, nor are they trying to steal billions of dollars from Swiss bank accounts. On the contrary, hacking is by nature a parasitic activity, where the hacker needs the host system in order to get the information he wants:

�in procuring access to a system, the hack does not aim at destroying the host on and which it operates. To do so would mean nothing less than a form of suicide. This exigency, which is fundamental to all parasitic endeavors, has been codified in one of the (un)official hacker commandments: "thou shalt not destroy"�Hacking is content to be neither a friend nor an enemy. Either position serves to reconfirm and justify the system in which and on which it operates (Gunkel 7).

Hackers are a community of people with their own attitude and culture whose real intent for most hacks is to find out how something works and have fun doing it. They are the people who, when young, were found by their mothers taking apart the family toaster or their father's Timex watch, just to figure out what makes it work. As adults, hackers are drawn to computers for similar rea

Related Essays

Computer System Hacking and Cracking .... security. For example, in one well publicized hacking attack, German hackers attempted to infiltrate NASA databases (Freedman 33). Even .... (2994 12 )

HONEYPOTS and Hackers .... Today there are conferences and magazines dedicated to hacking and hackers, and numerous Web sites offer hints on successful hacking for both neutral and .... (1792 7 )

Motivations of Hackers .... and "hack value" is "the notion among hackers that something is worth doing or is interesting," so therefore hackers rarely bother hacking something that does .... (4410 18 )

Computer Hackers: Cause and Prevention .... Finding the hackers is only part of the problem, though, because businesses often do not report hacking incidents to law enforcement. .... (4957 20 )

Federal Law & Software Piracy & Hacking Computer Software Piracy .... The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act is the primary legislation which attacks hacking but it is still only a .... Six different subsections of the Act apply to hackers. .... (1861 7 )

eter Samson vowed to find out how it worked (Levy 9). Levy also recounts details of a prank that illustrates that hackers have a sense of humor (Appendix). Because of their shared zeal for taking things apart, their common ideology, and their unique counterculture, hackers have a lot in common and tend to band together. A symbol of this unity, the Hacker Emblem, stands for hackers' "goals, values, and the hacker way of living" ("Hacker Emblem"). The emblem, shown below, is a representation of a glider formation from British mathematician John Horton's Game of Life, a cellular automaton he invented in 1970 ("Conway's Game of Life"). The emblem, which is not copyrighted or trademarked, can be used on a web page by inserting the XHTML code:

("Hacker Emblem"). In his article "How to Become A Hacker," Eric Steven Raymond provides added insight into the hacker attitude, which he suggests is comprised of five principles: 1. The world is full of fascinating problems waiting to be solved. 2. No problem should ever have to be solved twice. 3. Boredom and drudgery are evil. 4. Freedom is good. 5. Att

Category: Science - H