What are some good sites in general about the history/people of hacking?
Personally, I think defending the original meaning is now a lost battle, but someone else is bound to quibble anyway, so …
For “hacking” in the pedantic sense - rather than “cracking” - there’s the Jargon File.
I know you’re asking about websites, but if you’re interested in the history of hackers, either for research or out of personal interest, you must not miss Hackers by Steven Levy.
It’s a little dated now, but there are those who say the true spirit of hacking died years ago anyway.
The fabulous textfiles.com contains, among quite a few other things, a history section with stories from people in the scene about what was going on throughout the 70s and 80s.
Bruce Sterling’s book The Hacker Crackdown is a great history of hacker culture. He’s released the text for free on the net, but there’s also a dead tree edition.
Have fun. I know I’ve wasted many days digging around inside textfiles.com since I discovered it. Jason Scott, the proprietor, is currently making a documentary about BBSes that looks like it’s going to be quite interesting.
Again, be aware that what you think you know about hackers' is false: The media has been spreading moronic lies about what computer folk are like for decades now. [ul] [li]**Hackers**: Creative types who use computers to create, much like painters use paint to create and writers use language. Hackers generally don't break security, but they will find ways around obnoxious rules if they can't create with the rules in the way. Hackers in general don't have much respect for authority’: Intelligence counts for a lot more than a suit or a title. Some hackers will break the security on a machine to give the owner incentive to fix it, possibly leaving the maintainer clues about how he should improve things. But that is somewhat rare, and it can be seen as a rather amoral use of the skills hackers possess.[/li]
Hackers in general value the free exchange of ideas, and see repetitive labor as one of the world’s great evils. All technological breakthroughs in computers come from hackers, and hackers are more willing to share those breakthroughs than the corporations they work for.
[li]Crackers: People who use computers to commit crimes. Generally not as intelligent as hackers, and certainly not as creative. Crackers are motivated by things like greed and personal vendettas and other rather boring (from a hacker viewpoint) social constructs. Crackers generally rely upon prewritten tools that turn breaking security into an exercise of mindlessly punching buttons. Very, very little new comes out of the cracker world.[/li][/ul]
Based, of course, on what people in the computer industry have been saying for years.
Note the earliest reported citation for the word. I first encountered hacker to indicate a destructive outsider in my job as a programmer at the end of the 70s and the people who were using the term had been programming since the mid-60s.
It is one thing to try to separate “good” hackers from “bad” crackers in one’s personal lexicon. However, it is historically inaccurate to claim that “the media has been spreading moronic lies” when, in fact, the media has simply been reporting the usage that is prevalent in a large segment of the computer industry.
Masters of Deception, its quasi-fiction but the names and events are accurate and its an insight to what hackers were in the glory days.
Note that the jargon file is MIT-centric. (And we know about the ego problems there.) At 4 of the 5 universities I’ve been a CS faculty/student “hacker” meant solely a bad programmer. (As in “incompetent”.) At only one college did “hacker” mean a good programmer to some of the people. This follows from the pre-CS negative use of the term “hack” as in “hack writer”.
There has never been/never will be an “official meaning”. This is language, words have multiple meanings. Get used to it.
Derleth, one would assume that you being being proven wrong again and again and again and again, would inspire you to stop hijacking innocent threads with your nonsense. I mean fighting ignorance and all.
For anyone who cares, just seach on Derleth and Hacking and find one of the many threads where his silliness has been dispelled.
Sorry to butt in but I have heard the same thing about hackers. Hackers=good Crackers=bad and Linus Torvald agrees. I seem to remember something about MIT being the place where the hacker thing started but here is a book I read about the subject to settle it.
(Linus wrote the prologue)
Just click on the book and go to the back cover.http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/037575878X/qid=1069658991/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/002-2285358-5366449?v=glance&s=books
Nobody cares about the semantic games. Except people who ARE hackers/crackers/whatever you want to call yourselves.
As far as I’m concerned, they’re one and the same, with or without malice. Both, by breaking security and ignoring rules, are breaking the law. Argue about it in jail or at the hacker round table or whatever, but stop wasting our time here with the same old hijacks.
Another vote for Hacker Crackdown.
And yes, that was a bit harsh. Sorry, but I’m kinda interested in the topic myself, and the semantic hijack will do nothing but deter the discussion.
Oh yeah… the point of the post. Good call. If you want to know about the history of hacking you can’t leave out the phone phreaks. Doing a search on captain crunch will get you started
And here is good to…
http://www.xs4all.nl/~l0rd/
its got the basic history and ethics.
That doesn’t necessarily mean Derleth is justified in hijacking every thread that mentions the word hacker in a way he disapproves of. The point is that a lot of people use the hacker/cracker distinction in the same way Derleth does, but we’re smart enough to realize that it’s a non-mainstream use of the word. Many people in the security field make the hacker/cracker distinction among themselves because it’s useful when you’re speaking to other people who make the same distinction. It’s not useful in the mainstream because that’s not the way the word is used everywhere, and there’s just no point trying to change that. Language is what it is.
Beating up laymen who “misuse” the term hacker is exactly analogous to having the medical types hijack every thread about the “flu” and insist that everyone use the exact scientific name of each and every virus strain with exact precision before they will be allowed to discuss why they feel so bad.
See, this is exactly why hackers[sup]*[/sup] are opposed to using the word “hacker” for a cracker. Most hackers don’t break security or ignore rules. The c programming language and the Unix family of operating systems, for instance, were created by hackers, and neither of those is illegal. In fact, C and Unix were almost by definition created by hackers: The creater of such a clever piece of software, even if he or she was not a hacker before, would become one by virtue of that clever act of creation. In saying “All hackers and crackers should be punished because they break the law”, what you really mean is “All crackers should be punished because they break the law”. While it’s true that some crackers are hackers, the overlap is far smaller than most people realize.
*by which I mean “people skilled in the use of computers”
cool down micco, if you notice i was apologizing for the interruption of the thread. If you want to yell at someone go after derleth. The question was about the history of hacking. Because the “experts”? know the difference doesn’t mean its so complicated a subject that its not worth mentioning. And i certianly didn’t beat up anyone with my post.
I didn’t mean to yell at anyone, certainly not you. Sorry if it came off wrong. I was only pointing out that agreeing with Derleth about the terminology (which I do) doesn’t make it any less tiresome when he posts the same rant everytime the word hacker is used on SDMB.
micco wrote
Except that Derleth isn’t a doctor. or a patient. or anyone else associated with things medical.
I am. Network security is my line of work and has been for a long time, and I’m respected in that field. I’ve got over a dozen patents in the space, I’ve helped define some of the common standards and protocols in place around the world today, I’ve built a few successful companies, all in the network security space. And in that field, most people refer to hackers as hackers. Not many, most. If someone calls them “crackers”, I know what they mean, and I don’t correct them. In fact, I don’t even feel they need correction, as the word is equally applicable. But the standard is and has been “hacker.” Although, I’ll tell you that the only people in the industry who use the word “crackers” are wanna-bes, usually script-kiddies who think they’re something more.
Hackers has always meant what it means today, namely one who uses his knowledge of computers or other technical systems to take advantage of them, typically in a negative connotation, but also sometimes in a positive one. It’s not as Derleth claims, that the meaning was hijacked at some point.
Also, the dictionary is clear in it’s definition that Derleth is wrong. Also, the media is clear in it’s definition that Derleth is wrong.
And by the way, Linus Torvalds is a great guy and very famous, but a nobody in the security world. (except for the obvious respect he enjoys in his own world)