> From: Mr. Suman Nandy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Re: [ilug-cal] Security Hole in Netscape Communicator
> Date: Tuesday, September 28, 1999 7:25 PM
<snip>
> width of the user - by calling Java codes through LiveConnect!. It does
> everything in the Background, other than sending an alert ( of course a
> real hacker won't be fool enough or generous enough to show any alert!).
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
I feel sad that a member of the LUG chooses to use the word "hacker" in such a loose
fashion....
hacker (noun).
-------------------
[originally, someone who makes furniture with an axe] 1. A person who enjoys exploring
the details of programmable
systems and how to stretch their capabilities, as opposed to most users, who prefer to
learn only the minimum
necessary. 2. One who programs enthusiastically (even obsessively) or who enjoys
programming rather than just
theorizing about programming. 3. A person capable of appreciating hack value. 4. A
person who is good at programming
quickly. 5. An expert at a particular program, or one who frequently does work using
it or on it; as in `a Unix
hacker'. (Definitions 1 through 5 are correlated, and people who fit them congregate.)
6. An expert or enthusiast of
any kind. One might be an astronomy hacker, for example. 7. One who enjoys the
intellectual challenge of creatively
overcoming or circumventing limitations. 8. [deprecated] A malicious meddler who tries
to discover sensitive
information by poking around. Hence `password hacker', `network hacker'. The correct
term for this sense is cracker.
cracker (noun).
---------------------
One who breaks security on a system. Coined ca. 1985 by hackers in defense against
journalistic misuse of hacker (q.v.,
sense 8). An earlier attempt to establish `worm' in this sense around 1981-82 on
Usenet was largely a failure. Use of
both these neologisms reflects a strong revulsion against the theft and vandalism
perpetrated by cracking rings. While
it is expected that any real hacker will have done some playful cracking and knows
many of the basic techniques, anyone
past larval stage is expected to have outgrown the desire to do so except for
immediate, benign, practical reasons (for
example, if it's necessary to get around some security in order to get some work
done).
Thus, there is far less overlap between hackerdom and crackerdom than the mundane
reader misled by sensationalistic
journalism might expect. Crackers tend to gather in small, tight-knit, very secretive
groups that have little overlap
with the huge, open poly-culture this lexicon describes; though crackers often like to
describe themselves as hackers,
most true hackers consider them a separate and lower form of life.
>From The Jargon File - 4.1.4 (http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/jargon/)
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