Farewell, Crackers!
Grey Hat Developer
5 May 2016
In my humble opinion, when it’s all said and done, after all variations have been enumerated, the difference between who we call hackers and who we call crackers is this- hackers build, break, and/then repair things. Whereas crackers, they break things and/then leave them broken.
A while ago an article was shared on Twitter by InfoSecHotSpot. This post isn’t about the article. We all know what pop-culture and the media has done with the term hacker. Frankly, I find it very disrespectful. If not flat out condescending.
No. This post is about a comment from another account that used the term “Crackers” to refer to the group of individuals who the article referred to as hackers.
“Dream..Sometimes you got to close your eyes and really envision that shit, bro. If you like it, then it’s beautiful. If you don’t? Then you might as well fade the fuck out right now”(“eps2.2_init_1asec”)
I would hope that for a great majority of the #InfoSec Community, the lines aren’t fuzzy between what a #hacker and a #cracker is. What isn’t clear is the manner in which we allow ourselves to refer to a hacker’s somewhat equal-opposite as a Cracker.
Being from the South, I likewise find it very disrespectful and flat out condescending to call someone a cracker. Granted, the term was used in an entirely different context within the environments that I grew up in. The use of this term is one that requires deep reflection. For instance, knowing how it’s been used in places that have nurtured my up bringing, does that make it an okay term to use in the context of an InfoSec environment? Would we be having this discussion if the term in question was “nigger”?
If at this point you’re a bit uncomfortable, I get it. Hence, the discussion. When we are honest about these things, change can happen. The InfoSec Community should seriously consider doing away with this term.
As for myself, my team, and the Grey Hat Dev Community, we will no longer refer to the hacker’s somewhat equal-opposite skill and character type as a cracker. Moving forward we will refer to these individuals as “phackers”. The underlying meaning and wordplay translates to Fake Hacker’s or Posing Hacker’s.
So yeah, farewell, Crackers!
Hack on, Ladies and Gentlemen…
