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"But did you, in your three- piece psychology and 1950's
technobrain, ever take a look behind the eyes of the hacker? Did you
ever wonder what made him tick, what forces shaped him, what may
have molded him? I am a hacker, enter my world..." ("The Conscience
of a Hacker", The Mentor) "Fear them not therefore: for there is nothing covered,
that shall not be revealed; and hid, that shall not be known"
(Matthew 10:26)
THE HACKER
Another idiot has been locked up because of committing a
senseless act with little or no thought to the consequences. Law
enforcement needs to look good, the news becomes public domain and
the press is unleashed, using attention grabbing headlines like:
"Computer terrorist busted", or better, a "hacker". Not only is the term misused, but it is usually only
understood to be a mere synonym for "computer pirate", which is not
only limitive, but completely wrong. Few people, even those who
would define themselves as such, really know what "being a hacker"
means.
The WWWebster Online Dictionary (http://www.m-w.com/), at
the "hacker" entry says:
Main Entry: hacker
Pronunciation: 'ha-k&r
Function: noun
Date: 14th century
1 : one that hacks
2 : a person who is inexperienced or unskilled at a
particular activity "a tennis hacker"
3 : an expert at programming and solving problems with a
computer
4 : a person who illegally gains access to and sometimes
tampers with information in a computer system
Among the various meanings quoted above, (besides
definition 1, which is obvious...), definition 4 is the one which
generally corresponds to the idea of "the hacker" that the majority
of people have, while definition 3, is the one which is actually
closer to the real meaning of "hacker", even if it is still rather
limiting.
A dictionary rarely gives a definative answer, but it is
always a good start.
For a more precise definition we can consult a specific
dictionary such as the Jargon File, the most prestigious dictionary
of hacker terminology, "a comprehensive compendium of hacker slang
illuminating many aspects of hackish tradition, folklore, and
humor", begun by Raphael Finkel of the university of Stanford in
1975, and then passed in management to Don Woods of the MIT, up to
see the light of the printed paper in 1983, with the title of "The
Hacker's Dictionary" (Harper & Row CN 1082, ISBN 0-06-091082-8, also
known in the scene as "Steele-1983").
The on-line hacker Jargon File, version 2.9.10, 01 JUL 1992
(part of the Project Gutenberg), at the "hacker" entry says:
:hacker: [originally, someone who makes furniture with an
axe] n. 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'. See {cracker}.
Since this is a specific dictionary, the definition of
hacker here is closer to its original meaning, even if it is
necessary to extrapolate it from the varied proposed meanings in
order to obtain the closest and most faithfull interpretation.
A hacker is a person that loves to study all things in
depth (definition 1), especially the more apparently meaningless
details, to discover hidden peculiarities, new features and weakness
in them. For example, it is possible to hack a book, by using it to
equalize the legs of a table, or to use the sharp edge of one of its
pages to cut something. The main point being that it is used for
more than it's conventional function of being read. But more than
this, a hacker soon learns that the same techniques used for
exploiting computer systems can be used to manipulate people. This
is the so-called social hacking. With a little skilled psychology,
the masters of "social hacking" can convince other people to do what
they want (within limits of course, and depending on the abilities
of the "social hacker"), in order to obtain the information they
require. This may sound like an unusual and unatural practise, but
once you take into account that this is performed quite regularly,
in everyday life, by girlfriends, friends and teachers etc. to
obtain what they want from others, it's not that strange, even if
hackers do use a little more skill and technique.
Another way of bringing hacking out from the computer's
world, is the so-called vadding (the term is actually rarely used,
but the activity is largely practiced) this consists of exploring
places where the average person doesn't normally have access, such
as basements, roofs of public buildings, maintenance tunnels,
elevator wells and similar places. Sometimes, some of these
activities born inside the hacker scene, grow and eventually
separate, becoming new entities, like phreaking, the term applied to
the world of "hacking" telephones and telephone systems, or the term
carding, which is basically "techno-credit card fraud",.. very
illegal and risky.
In short, a hacker has the tendency to use his skills also
beyond of the computer context, and anywhere tends to use the
hacking techniques and to discover what is normally hidden to the
common man.
For a hacker, the ability to reason, harness his full brain
capacity and maintain his mind at maximum efficiency levels, is most
important.
With a few exceptions, it is unusual that a hacker would
smoke, use drugs, or drink excessively (however beer appears to be
the preferred choice, when alcohol is drunk). Speaking of John
Draper, (a.k.a "Captain Crunch", one of the most legendary
phreaker/hackers, famous for discovering that by sending a tone of
2600Hz over the telephone lines of AT&T, it was possible to effect
free calls), Steven Levy says: "Cigarettes made him violent":
smoking next to him was extremely hazardous to your health...
A hacker is certainly a programming maniac, (definition 2):
once a technique has been discovered, it is necessary to write a
program that exploits it.
Hackers often spend many day's and night's in front of a
computer, programming or experimenting with new techniques. After
spending so many hours in front of a computer, a hacker gains a
remarkable ability to analyze large amounts of data very quickly.
The ability to program quickly, (definition 4) can be a
characteristic of a hacker, but is not always necessarily so. As far
as a hacker is concerned, it is faster to type on a keyboard, than
it is to write things down, many hackers spend quite a lot of time
reflecting over, or analyzing previously written code, while they
are programming.
Definition 5 is, in effect, a restrictive meaning of the
word "hacker" since it limits it to a single field (as in UNIX), it
can however be considered as a specialization.
Actually in these cases, especially when it concerns true
experts in a field, the terms wizard or guru are preferred. For
example, the definition "UNIX wizard" in the United States is also
recognized outside of the hacker environment and it can be included
in a resume.
Definition 3 may be considered apart: a person that
qualifies for this definition is not neccasarily a real hacker, but
a very experienced person with a good knowledge, who is not
neccasarily able to develop hacker techniques. To make it clearer,
think about the differences between a good author and someone that
appreciates a good book.
Definition 7, together with definition 1, are the ones that
get closer to the real essence of the hacker. To study a system, to
discover weaknesses, the peculiarities and hidden features of it,
and then use them to go beyond its limits, with creativeness and
imagination. This, in a certain way, brings us directly to
definition 8. The person with these skills can use his knowledge to
try to access information to which he doesn't have the right to
access, and here the discourse gets complicated, because for a
hacker there is no information which he does not have the right to
access. We will get back to this point later, when we will speak
about the "hacker ethic".
Finally, although it has nothing to do with the character
of the hacker, I would like to attract attention to definition 6;
for a hacker, the term hacker is always positive: if he speaks of a
"hacker of astronomy", he speaks of a true expert of that subject.
Contrary to this, in everyday language, according to definition 2 of
the WWWebster dictionary, a "hacker" in a certain field is a person
that is not skilled in that specific field.
After giving the definitions, the Jargon File provides more
information on the meaning of the word "hacker":
The term `hacker' also tends to connote membership in the
global community [...]. It also implies that the person described is
seen to subscribe to some version of the hacker ethic [...].
It is better to be described as a hacker by others than to
describe oneself that way. Hackers consider themselves something of
an elite (a meritocracy based on ability), though one to which new
members are gladly welcome. There is thus a certain ego satisfaction
to be had in identifying yourself as a hacker (but if you claim to
be one and are not, you'll quickly be labeled {bogus}). [...] [or
most commonly, the most used term in these circumstances is "lamer",
even if next versions of the Jargon File use this term in a slightly
different context]
But, perhaps more than anything else, curiosity and above
average intelligence are the signatures of a true hacker. The hacker
has an almost physical need of knowledge of any kind.
The hacker is most certainly a voracious reader, even if
his preference is only for scientific matters or science fiction,
and generally one would find many shelves full of books in his room.
But a hacker is not satisfied by the "ready made" knowledge, of the
information that he finds in the books written for the average
person, a hacker wants it all, and collects all possible
information.
Schools are institutions that are not able to furnish all
the information that a hacker needs. The governments and all the
public or private institutions have the tendency to furnish the
least necessary information.
About this point, Steven Levy in "Hackers, Heroes of the
Computer Revolution" (written in 1984), affirms that the hackers
"are possessed not merely by curiosity, but by a positive *lust to
know.*"
This idea is even clearer in these excerpts took from what
is a considered "the hacker's manifesto": "The Conscience of to
Hacker" (sometimes erroneously reported, in a nearly prophetic
sense, as "Mentor's Last Words"), written by The Mentor on January
8th 1986, and published for the first time on the e-zine Phrack,
Volume One, Issue 7, Phile 3.
This text collects in a few paragraphs, a large part of the
hacker philosophy, with touching results for most true hackers (even
if it may be difficult to think of a hacker as a person that has a
heart as well as a brain).
[...]
Mine is a world that begins with school... I'm smarter than
most of the other kids, this crap they teach us bores me... Damn
underachiever.
[...]
we've been spoon-fed baby food at school when we hungered
for steak... the bits of meat that you did let slip through were
pre-chewed and tasteless. We've been dominated by sadists, or
ignored by the apathetic. The few that had something to teach found
us willing pupils, but those few are like drops of water in the
desert.
[...]
We explore... and you call us criminals. We seek after
knowledge... and you call us criminals. We exist without skin color,
without nationality, without religious bias... and you call us
criminals. You build atomic bombs, you wage wars, you murder, cheat,
and lie to us and try to make us believe it's for our own good, yet
we're the criminals.
Yes, I am a criminal. My crime is that of curiosity. My
crime is that of judging people by what they say and think, not what
they look like. My crime is that of outsmarting you, something that
you will never forgive me for.
[...]
In these words, you will see the frustration of living in a
defective world, that deprives the individuals that wish to rise
above the mediocre, of the very information and resources they
desire, to know what is kept hidden, and it condemns them
hypocritically as criminals.
But the desperate search of knowledge is only one of the
characteristics of the hacker. Another sure one is the pursute of
extreme perfection. An interesting article, is the one that narrates
the history of the first hackers, and of how they developed
"Spacewar!" (the first videogame in history, born as a demo for the
TX-0, meant as a "killer application" for this computer, with all
its features exploitable), is "The origin of Spacewar", written by
J. M. Graetz, and published in the August, 1981 issue of Creative
Computing magazine.
One of the forces driving the dedicated hacker is the quest
for elegance. It is not sufficient to write programs that work. They
must also be "elegant," either in code or in function -- both, if
possible. An elegant program does its job as fast as possible, or is
as compact as possible, or is as clever as possible in taking
advantage of the particular features of the machine in which it
runs, and (finally) produces its results in an aesthetically
pleasing form without compromising either the results or operation
of other programs associated with it.
But the elegance and the perfection of hackers is not
always comprehensible to the average individual. A hacker can often
be in ecstasy reading some code written by another hacker, admiring
his ability and "tasting" his style, as if he was reading poetry.
For example, normally to exchange the content of two
variables (a and b, in this case), the statement most commonly used
is this, which uses a third temporary variable:
dummy = a : a = b : b = dummy
The following method, instead, doesn't need the third
variable, because it exploits a mathematical peculiarity of the
boolean operator XOR:
a = a XOR b : b = a XOR b : a = a XOR b
Even if this system is at least three times slower than the
first one because it requires the execution of three mathematical
operations, (however it allows the saving of memory that the third
variable would normally occupy), a hacker will surely admire the
ingeniousness and the elegance of this method, to him it assumes the
taste of a Japanese haiku.
Talking about the perfectionism of the hackers, in
"Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution" written by Steven Levy
in 1984, in the chapter 2 ("The Hacker Ethic"), we read:
Hackers believe that essential lessons can be learned about
the systems--about the world--from taking things apart, seeing how
they work, and using this knowledge to create new and even more
interesting things. They resent any person, physical barrier, or law
that tries to keep them from doing this.
This is especially true when a hacker wants to fix
something that (from his point of view) is broken or needs
improvement. Imperfect systems infuriate hackers, whose primal
instinct is to debug them. This is one reason why hackers generally
hate driving cars--the system of randomly programmed red lights and
oddly laid out one-way streets causes delays which are so goddamned
UNNECESSARY that the impulse is to rearrange signs, open up
traffic-light control boxes . . .redesign the entire system.
In a perfect hacker world, anyone pissed off enough to open
up a control box near a traffic light and take it apart to make it
work better should be perfectly welcome to make the attempt.
It's just in the name of such principle that the Linux
operating system and the Gnu C compiler have been developed, their
code is open and available to be changed and modified by anyone.
Lately, many important commercial software producers also
started moving in this direction, as Netscape: Netscape Communicator
5, will, in fact be the first software, originally born as a
"closed" commercial product, to be developed with this type of
philosophy.
A hacker is never satisfied with the default settings of a
program or of the custom installations, he always has to open the
configuration menu and set the options to get the maximum
performance, and to make the product work as close as possible to
his "way". A hacker must be able to use, to modify and to check all
the possible features of a program.
But after all, what motivates hackers? Why do they create
programs that exploit advanced techniques and then distribute them
free? And why do they freely distribute knowledge that was
incredibly difficult to obtain?
A good answer could be found in the site of the KIN (Klever
Internet Nothings, http://www.klever.net), they are not exactly a
hacker crew, but a group of people that write programs and release
them freely on the Internet:
What makes people write software and distribute it for
free? Vanity, you said? Well, maybe.. But after all, what is this
business all about? Is it all about money? Ask anyone - it's not.
Most people I know in the industry will tell you that.
Their idea is "just leave me alone and let me do what I
love to do".
In short, it's not about money. It's about feeling free to
do what you want, and, just possibly, to find someone that
appreciates your work.
THE HACKER
ETHIC
The true hacker doesn't have morals, and he would never
censor information or ideas of any kind. An initiative of the
Italian priest Don Fortunato di Noto, (fortunad@sistemia.it,) who in
January of 1998 formed the "Committee of resistance against the
Pedophiles", and who asked for the help of the hacker community to
unmask, capture and close the sites of the pedophiles on the
Internet, failed miserably as it was only supported by
self-acclaimed hackers without any skill.
Besides, hackers are tolerant by nature, and rarely get
angry, but they are irritated by people and tasks perceived to be
wasting their time.
There are however, some things that hackers can be
intolerant of. One of these is when lies are told, to, or about
them, you can say that hackers are imbeciles (it's an opinion, after
all), but you can not say that they steal chickens. And yet, it
would still be unusual that hackers would hack a site to remove the
lies propogated about them. It would be more typical that they would
create another site, refuting the lies against them.
Hacking can be used like as a form of protest, breaking
into and modifying the websites of very well known societies and
government or military corporate entities, can be a way to make
public certain injustices (especially attacks to the liberty of
information or expression) or violations of human rights. The hacks,
of the websites of the CIA (that became Central Stupidity Agency)
and of the Department of Justice, are famous for being hacked with
this intention in mind.
In the article "Hacking for Human Rights?" by Arik
Hesseldahl (ahess@reporters.net) published on the online magazine
Wired (http://www.wired.com) dated 14.Jul.98 9:15am, the hacker
Bondie Wong, (a dissident Chinese astrophysicist who lives in
Canada, that temporarily disabled a Chinese satellite in 1997), a
member of the famous hacker crew, Cult of the Dead Cow (which in the
beginning of 1999 released the Back Orifice trojan) threatened to
attack the computer networks of foreign companies that did business
with China, causing them serious damages and huge financial losses.
In an interview conducted by Oxblood Ruffin, a former
United Nations consultant, and published on Wired, Blondie Wong
says: "Human rights is an international issue, so I don't have a
problem with businesses that profit from our suffering paying part
of the bill".
Contrary to the complete lack of moral judgement (but,
above all, of moralism) of hackers, lies a deep ethical sense, that
is something allmost "religious" in most hackers.
About this point, we can go back to the Jargon File:
:hacker ethic, the: n.
1. The belief that information-sharing is a powerful
positive good, and that it is an ethical duty of hackers to share
their expertise by writing free software and facilitating access to
information and to computing resources wherever possible.
2. 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 sense 1, and many act on it by
writing and giving away free software. A few go further and assert
that *all* information should be free and *any* proprietary control
of it is bad [...]
Sense 2 is more controversial: some people consider the act
of cracking itself to be unethical [...]
But this principle at least moderates the behavior of
people who see themselves as `benign' crackers (see also {samurai}).
On this view, it is one of the highest forms of hackerly courtesy to
(a) break into a system, and then (b) explain to the sysop,
preferably by email from a {superuser} account, exactly how it was
done and how the hole can be plugged --- acting as an unpaid (and
unsolicited) {tiger team} [The "tiger team" derives from the U.S.
military jargon. These people are paid professionals who do
hacker-type tricks, e.g., leave cardboard signs saying "bomb" in
critical defense installations, hand-lettered notes saying "Your
codebooks have been stolen" (they usually haven't been) inside
safes, etc. Serious successes of tiger teams sometimes lead to early
retirement for base commanders and security officers].
[...]
Breaking into a system is not seen by the hacker as a
criminal action, but like a challenge. The idea is not to damage the
"victim", but to find a way to penetrate its defenses. It's the
intellectual challenge, the curiosity, the will to experiment and to
explore, this is what moves the hacker, not the will to damage
someone or something, and not even to obtain personal profit.
In another writing of The Mentor, "A Novice's Guide to
Hacking- 1989 edition", dated December 1988, the author opens the
essay with a call to the ethics of the category, to which follows a
list of "suggestions for guidelines to follow to ensure that not
only you stay out of trouble, but you pursue your craft without
damaging the computers you hack into or the companies who own them":
As long as there have been computers, there have been
hackers. In the 50's at the Massachusets Institute of Technology
(MIT), students devoted much time and energy to ingenious
exploration of the computers. Rules and the law were disregarded in
their pursuit for the 'hack'. Just as they were enthralled with
their pursuit of information, so are we. The thrill of the hack is
not in breaking the law, it's in the pursuit and capture of
knowledge.
In a file titled "The Hotmail Hack" written by Digital
Assassin of the "United Underground" (or "U2", for short), in which
a weakness of the HotMail system is illustrated, through which it is
possible to enter into the mailbox of another person, the author, at
a certain point interrupts the explanation with these words:
....but before I tell you how to use that line, I'm going
to side track for a little theory behind this hack. Because there's
NO point in a hack, if you don't know how it works. That is the
whole idea of hacking, to find out how systems work.
These are clear examples of what the real intent of a
hacker is when he breaks a system. It's very close to the idea of a
child that opens a toy to see how it works. The difference is that
the hacker tries not to destroy the toy (aside from the fact that
the toy is not his own...).
Anyway, let's see the specific definition of the "cracker",
according to the Jargon File:
:cracker: n. 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.
Both these neologisms reflected 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.
Thus, there is far less overlap between hackerdom and
crackerdom than the {mundane} [the term "mundane" is taken from the
Sci-Fi fandom and identifies everything outside the world of the
computer science, or the hacking] 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.
Ethical considerations aside, hackers figure that anyone
who can't imagine a more interesting way to play with their
computers than breaking into someone else's has to be pretty
{losing} [on the other hand, they have the same consideration for
the people who use the computer in an absolute conventional way,
such as only to write documents or to play] [...]
Furthermore, about the "cracking" itself, the Jargon File
says:
:cracking: n. The act of breaking into a computer system;
what a {cracker} does. Contrary to widespread myth, this does not
usually involve some mysterious leap of hackerly brilliance, but
rather persistence and the dogged repetition of a handful of fairly
well-known tricks that exploit common weaknesses in the security of
target systems. Accordingly, most crackers are only mediocre
hackers.
However, This is a superficial and reductive vision. In
fact, as it is easily imaginable, there exist people, that are as
experienced with computers and as thirsty of knowledge, that however
don't have any respect of the hacker ethic and don't hesitate to
perform actions meant to damage computer systems or other people.
They are the so-called Dark-side hackers. This term derives
from George Lucas' "Star Wars". A Dark-side hacker, just like Darth
Vader, is "seduced by the dark side of the Force". It has nothing to
do with the common idea of "good" and "bad", but it's closer to the
idea of "legal" and "chaotic" in Dungeons&Dragons: In substance, the
dark-side hackers are accorded the same dignity and recognized as
having the ability of a hacker, but their orientation makes them a
dangerous element for the community.
A more common definition, reserved for those that damage
someone else's computer systems without drawing any benefit from it,
(therefore for pure stupidity or evilness), it is that of Malicious
hackers.
More recent versions of the Jargon File (in which some most
obsolete terms have been removed), as the version 4.0.0, 24 JUL
1996, makes clear, not only the distinction between hacker and
cracker, but also between the entire hack scenes and other parallel
realities, like piracy, and the "warez d00dz", who collect an
impressive amount of software (games and applications, or better
said "gamez" and "appz"), that they are never likely to use, and
whose greatest pride is to get software, break its protections, and
distribute it on their website before their rival crew, where
possible, within the same day it was released ("0-day warez").
One could think that the Jargon File speaks only in theory,
and that it describes the hacker ethic in a fantastic and utopian
way. This is not so, hackers really are attached to their
principles. The following is a practical example concerning one of
the most famous hacker crews, the LOD (Legions Of Doom, that takes
its name from the group of baddies in the series of cartoons of
Superman and his Superfriends), of which The Mentor was also a
member during the years 1988-89 (the already cited author of "The
conscience of a Hacker").
In "The History of LOD/H", Revision #3 May 1990, written by
Lex Luthor (founder of the crew, from the name of the baddie in the
movie Superman I), and published on their e-zine "The LOD/H
Technical Journal", Issue #4, released on May 20, 1990 (File 06 of
10), we can read:
Of all 38 members, only one was forcefully ejected. It was
found out that Terminal Man [member dof the LOD/H in 1985] destroyed
data that was not related to covering his tracks. This has always
been unacceptable to us, regardless of what the media and law
enforcement tries to get you to think.
Yet, not all agree upon the same principles, and there are
some "grey areas": for example, taking possession of objects that
allow you to access information, or pursuing a personal purpose, can
be considered "ethical" by some. A specific example could be
"grabbing": the theft of things like keys, magnetic cards, manuals
or technical schemes, anyway this is a debatable activity, since a
hacker prefers to copy rather to subtract, not only to not damage
the "victim", but also to avoid leaving traces of his intrusion. A
more acceptable and legal variant is "trashing", that consists in
looking inside the garbage of the subject, searching for objects
and/or useful information.
But breaking into computer systems is only a small activity
amongst the many things that hackers are involved in, and the
aversion against the virtual vandal actions are a small part of the
hacker ethic.
The hacker ethic is something greater, almost mystic, and
draws its origins from the first hackers, those that programmed the
TX-0, using the first available computers in the big American
universities like MIT or Stanford.
From the already cited "Hackers, Heroes of the Computer
Revolution" by Steven Levy:
Something new was coalescing around the TX-0: a new way of
life, with a philosophy, an ethic, and a dream.
There was no one moment when it started to dawn on the TX-0
hackers that by devoting their technical abilities to computing with
a devotion rarely seen outside of monasteries they were the vanguard
of a daring symbiosis between man and machine. With a fervor like
that of young hot-rodders fixated on souping up engines, they came
to take their almost unique surroundings for granted, Even as the
elements of a culture were forming, as legends began to accrue, as
their mastery of programming started to surpass any previous
recorded levels of skill, the dozen or so hackers were reluctant to
acknowledge that their tiny society, on intimate terms with the
TX-0, had been slowly and implicitly piecing together a body of
concepts, beliefs, and mores.
The precepts of this revolutionary Hacker Ethic were not so
much debated and discussed as silently agreed upon. No manifestos
were issued ["The Mentor"'s one, very polemic, was written only
about twenty years later]. No missionaries tried to gather converts.
The computer did the converting [...]
Shortly, Steven Levy sums up the "hacker ethic" this way:
Access to computers -- and anything which might teach you
something about the way the world works -- should be unlimited and
total. Always yield to the Hands-On imperative.
All information should be free.
Mistrust Authority. Promote Decentralization.
Hackers should be judged by their hacking, not bogus
criteria such as degrees, age, race, or position.
You can create art and beauty on a computer.
Computers can change your life for the better.
LIKE ALADDIN'S LAMP, YOU COULD GET IT [THE COMPUTER] TO DO
YOUR BIDDING.
THE LAMER
From "The Hacker Crackdown - Law and Disorder on the
Electronic Frontier" by Bruce Sterling, Bantam Books, 1992. (ISBN
0-553-08058-X, paperback: ISBN 0-553-56370-X, released as free
electronic text for non-commercial purposes)
There are hackers today who fiercely and publicly resist
any besmirching of the noble title of hacker. Naturally and
understandably, they deeply resent the attack on their values
implicit in using the word "hacker" as a synonym for
computer-criminal.
[...]
The term "hacking" is used routinely today by almost all
law enforcement officials with any professional interest in computer
fraud and abuse. American police describe almost any crime committed
with, by, through, or against a computer as hacking.
If the differentiation between hacker, cracker and
dark-side hacker can result a very tiny distinction for the ones who
live outside of the computer scene, nobody, especially a journalist,
should confuse a hacker with the poor idiot that was locked up for
using, with no thought to the consequences, programs that he found
somewhere. (even if using the term "hacker" does sell more
newspapers... The difference between hackers and journalists is that
the aforementioned have ethics, the latter, not even a sense of
modesty... but this is often simply mere ignorance).
Let's take as an example the following article published on
the Italian newspaper "L'Unione Sarda" (http://www.unionesarda.it/),
by Luigi Almiento (almiento@unionesarda.it).
POLICE.
The arrested hacker is a surveyor, aged 25
Files were stolen from the computers of internet
"navigators", with the aid of a virus
spread on the Internet
Many people from different national service providers,
recently learned to their own detriment, that it is better not to
stay and chat to strangers on the chat-lines of the Internet. This
occured when a hacker aged 25, obtained the user names and passwords
of their dial up accounts, while they were on-line.
[...]
"Harris", explains the lieutenant Saverio Spoto, commander
of the Police Station [actually they are "Carabinieri", not the
normal Police, because in Italy there are two different polices,
don't ask why], « contacted his victims through Icq, a "talking
place", offered by many Internet providers». During these "written
talks", using an access key he acquired that gives false
information, G. F. sent the Netbus virus to the computers of his
victims. This allowed him to "navigate" the hard drives of the
computers of these people while they were connected to the internet.
Harris also had a site, which offered pornographic pictures,
pirate-programs and files of every kind, and whenever someone
connected to his address, they were immediately infected by the
computer virus.
[...]
In a few words, lieutenant Spoto succeeds in showing his
complete ignorance of the subject: he gives an abominable definition
of ICQ, defines Netbus as a virus rather than a trojan (which means
he doesn't have any idea of how it works), and still not being
satisfied with this, attributes it with a contagiousness similar to
the Ebola virus: to be infected simply by connecting to an Internet
address sounds like something supernatural. Then, he shamelessy
concludes with the invitation "If anyone has had contact with
Harris, and thinks that their files may have been forced, they can
come to us at the Police Station". If everyone at the Police Station
are as experienced as he is, it would be preferable to keep the
Harris' "virus" rather than allowing them to put their hands
anywhere near your computer.
Besides, these self-acclaimed hackers are almost never bust
because of a police operation, (unless they caused a lot of
trouble), but because they have the stupid habit of boasting of
their actions in chatrooms or even in real life. Often in front of
total strangers, that are often police officers or people close to
the law enforcement environment, (such as the child or the
girlfriend of a police officer).
In fact, the conclusive part of the article regarding
"Harris" says: "The investigators did not explain how, but only that
they had succeeded in identifying the surveyor": obviously the law
officers would like people to think that they identified the guilty
person by means of some complicated technique, pursuing the
information packets or something in this line, rather than admitting
that they only had to make a few enquiries on IRC channels.
The hacker is the one that develops the exploit, and
eventually creates a program based on this expoit. People that
blindly use these programs because they found them on the Internet,
or even worse, because a friend passed them on to them, are merely
lamers, that only have a vague idea of how to use the tool they have
in their hands and they know nothing about computer systems,
programming, or how to cover their tracks. Often these
self-acclaimed hackers, self infect themselves with a virus or a
trojan they just downloaded, due to their incapabilities.
Putting these programs in the hands of the average person
is like giving a loaded gun to a five year-old.
The fact is, that up to the early '80s, computers were only
intended for hackers, specialized personnel or students. Only later
did they appear on the desks of offices and in houses. The first
home computers replaced the primitive consoles of videogames like
the Atari 2600, the Intellivision and the Colecovision (the
revolution was lead by the Commodore 64 and the Sinclair ZX
Spectrum), but still across the whole world there was a "computer
culture" throughout the '80s, there were published magazines that
taught programming (mainly BASIC, as well as Machine Code) and very
advanced techniques worthy of the best hackers. Then during the
'90s, Apple and Microsoft's dream started to come true, "a computer
on every desk and in every home". The computer became a common
appliance available to almost everybody, the general level of the
magazines started to drop, and almost all were confined to
publishing articles about the latest hardware and software, or
advice on how to use commercial applications.
This change in the computer world that made computers not
only the sole domain of the hackers, but for everyone, has certainly
had some positive general effects, but it proved to be a double
edged sword, especially with the advent of the Internet. These days
anyone can have powerful tools that inflict damage on other people,
real "digital weapons", without having a clue about how they work or
how they should be "handled". The average guy can get locked up just
for perpetrating what he thought was a "cool" joke, even if it was
in bad taste.
All those lamers-wannabe-hackers should better satisfy
their needs with APEX v1.00 r10/8/91, a nice program written by Ed
T. Toton III (however the original idea is older) that simulates the
connection to different US government and military computers (like
those of NORAD, or of NASA), among other things it is also possible
to pretend that you are the President of the United States of
America, and enter the system that controls the nuclear weapons.
With a bit of ability and practice, it is possible to
convince some friends that you are really trying to force the US
computer systems, and pass the time having good clean fun, without
hurting anybody, risking a jail sentence and/or offending the
hackers by trying to pretend to be what you are not.
But besides this, outside of the "criminal" context,
something that bothers hackers is the ever increasing mass of
self-claimed computer "experts", that actually don't know much more
than how to turn on a computer and launch a program, and they fill
their mouthes with loads of technical words about which they know
nothing.
At this point, it is very interesting to read this text
from the already quoted home page of the KIN:
I remember [...] When writing software was closer to art
and magic than to business and/or just coding. I miss that now. What
happened after that? Well, tons of fast graduates appeared who could
only do Basic or Clipper/DBase programming, who pretended to be the
best. They could wear suites and had money and relatives... I called
them nephews. How many times were you in the situation when you gave
the best offer, and you simply feel you HAD to write this software -
but in the end your client says something like: "I'm really sorry,
but I just got a call from my wife and her nephew works for this
company in Nebraska who are certified Basic engineers so we'll have
to give the contract to them?" The nephews produced terrible
software which led to terrible disappointments in the industry
('I've invested so much money in computers and it's not really
working for me').
[...] The Net gives you a chance to be first creative and
then think about business. Let's use it now - before nephews will
get their certified degrees....
Sadly, a crowd of nephews are already working, with or
without certified degrees, and armed with programs like Front Page
or Publisher creating websites, filling their big mouths with words
like FTP and client-server application, even if they don't know what
they mean or what they are talking about.
Luckily, the Net is large and, - at least for the moment, -
it generates its own rules by itself. There is room for everyone.
Credits:
by Valerio "Elf Qrin" Capello (http://www.ElfQrin.com)
Copyright (C) 1999 Valerio Capello
First written: 23JAN2000
v1.1eng 26MAR2000
This is a translation from the original Italian version
v1.5 r23JAN2000 (first written: 31AUG1999-09SEP1999)
Supervisor for the English language: SirD.
Latest version available from:
http://www.ElfQrin.com/docs/BeingHacker.html
Other language versions: Italian
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