What Is a Hacker?

Many people who don't know anything about hacking believe that computer criminals are hackers. Heck, that's what news stories call computer criminals.

Reporters who call criminals "hackers" make us real hackers angry.  Eric Raymond, author of “The New Hacker's Dictionary,” says, “Real hackers call these people ‘crackers’ and want nothing to do with them... being able to break security doesn’t make you a hacker any more than being able to hot wire cars makes you an automotive engineer.  Unfortunately, many journalists and writers have been fooled into using the word ‘hacker’ to describe crackers; this irritates real hackers no end... 

“The basic difference is, hackers build things; crackers break them.”

The “Hacker Jargon File” (Version 2.9.6, 16 August 1991), adds that “Hacking might be characterized as `an appropriate application of ingenuity'.  Whether the result is a quick-and-dirty patchwork job or a carefully crafted work of art, you have to admire the cleverness that went into it. An important secondary meaning of {hack} is `a creative practical joke'.”

Happy Hacker's clown princess, Carolyn Meinel tells us about her experiences with real hackers --->>

Books that will tell you more about what hacking is and who hackers are: 

• Raymond, Eric.  The New Hacker's Dictionary: MIT Press, 1996.
• Linzmayer, Owen W.  Apple Confidential; The Real Story of Apple Computer, Inc: No Starch Press, 1999.
• Sterling, Bruce.  The Hacker Crackdown; Law and Disorder on the Electronic Frontier: Bantam Books, 1993.
• Levy, Stephen.  Hackers; Heroes of the Computer Revolution: Delta Books, 1994.
  Meinel, Carolyn.  The Happy Hacker: a Guide to Mostly Harmless Computer Hacking: American Eagle Publications, 2nd ed. 1998.
• Also, see the Real Hackers series of Guides to (mostly) Harmless Hacking to learn more about how some of the best hackers learned their magic.