A lot of people believe that hackers are the bad guys (and girls) when it comes to the computer realm. That couldn’t be farther from the truth. The truth is what a lot of people call “hackers” are in fact correctly named “crackers.”
Hackers are computer professionals hired by a company to hack that specific company’s computer network. The point of this is to find weaknesses in the company’s network, and create solutions to make the network more secure.
Crackers on the other hand, break, or crack into computer networks without permission — these are the truly dangerous or“bad guys” when it comes to computers. Hackers have an ethical standard to use their professional skills and tools in order to help companies improve their computer networks, make them more secure. The opposite can be said with crackers in terms of their ethics and motivations. Crackers are not trying to help improve a company’s network, they try to ruin them, and sometimes exploit them. The crackers can be categorized into three groups.
The first group is the amateurs, or “script kiddies.” This group typically consists of school age kids (age 12-15) that download various toolkits and try to maliciously ruin or mess up other computers and computer networks. A script kiddie is, “someone who is not technologically sophisticated, who randomly seeks out a specific weakness over the Internet in order to gain root access to a system without really understanding what it is he/she is exploiting because the weakness was discovered by someone else. A script kiddie is not looking to target specific information or a specific company but rather uses knowledge of a vulnerability to scan the entire Internet for a victim that possesses that vulnerability.” (Definition from webopedia.com) While this group is generally not computer savvy, they make up the largest population of the computer cracker populace. These amateurs in turn tend to do the most damage to the general populace of legitimate computer users.
The second group termed crackers is typically college aged young adults. This group typically is more sophisticated and knowledgeable than the script kiddies, and usually they crack computer networks for the glory of it. The crackers desire to not only break into secure networks, but to leave some sort of tag or mark that shows their computer insight and ingenuity. These tags or marks are a way for crackers to show off their ability to break codes and boundaries. Some of the cracker population is a part of underground computer groups. Here they share their abilities and knowledge in breaking systems, as well as brag and boast about their accomplishments.
The last group are comprised of “career criminals.” This group is a very small percentage of the computer literate populace that makes a living cracking systems. These people use their own tools, applications, etc. to break into computer networks and make money from their exploits. These are brilliant people who break into secure networks, take what they want and do not leave any footprints (unlike the crackers). These computer geniuses tend to be great programmers, and computer technicians that choose to make money illegally as opposed to using their skills for good.
There are quite a few computer technicians and experts out there in the world. But remember to hire a computer hacker (legitimate computer professional ), as opposed to a cracker next time your network needs to be tested.
