Farewell, Crackers! v2.0_Intro_To_Hackers

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.

Version2.0_Intro_To_Hackers is an elaboration on the previous Farewell, Crackers! post. I felt it necessary to wax not only about the term crackers but also its counterpart term hacker. Why?

I’ve noticed that it’s not only the media that is overly misusing this term. Sadly, it’s also being misused and misrepresented in academic circles. This has to be stopped. We can not allow the bright minds of our future generations to be turned off or poisoned by these misrepresentations of a field that’s full of so much promise and potential.

When I first entered the journey of an InfoSec practitioner it was around the time the infamous hacker group Anonymous and LulzSec were in their prime. Mind you, I knew absolutely nothing about hacking (or so I thought) other than what I’d always been lead to believe about hackers by way of the media. I was an independent underground hip-hop artist who was struggling to make ends meet and the music scene wasn’t looking too promising so I decided to look into other career paths. Given that I’d spent a significant amount of time at my computer working with my DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) making music,  I figured I knew enough about computers to make a crossover move into “the computer field” as an option.

I went to a local DeVry University to talk with a guidance counselor and soon realized that wasn’t what I was looking for. There was just something in the back of my mind telling the “rapper” in me to start looking into learning more about that stuff those guys in those masks who were blowing up everyone’s Twitter feeds were doing. So what I did was fired up Google and typed the following words into my search bar- “How to become a hacker”. And this is where my life took a turn onto a road that I’ve been traveling along for about 8 or 9 years now. Yes, I know. I’m a Johnnie-Come-Lately and still just a baby to this amazing world.

Two significant things happened that day. The first was my discovery of there being a such thing as a Certified Ethical Hacker. Why is that important? That was important because here was a guy from the inner-city streets and all that entails, searching the internet for ways on how to become a hacker, and all he’s known up to this point about hackers was the hacker group Anonymous. Looking back, I can only imagine where my life would be now if I’d instead searched for “How to become a part of Anonymous”.

The second significant thing was that along with discovering the field of ethical hacking, I was fortunate enough to come across Eric Raymond’s so aptly named, “How to Become a Hacker”. This gem became my introductory how to. As a matter of fact, all these years later I find myself going back to this at times that I feel like I’m lost and somewhat drifting aimlessly along my path. (A link is at the end of this post). 

Now, considering the above, I feel it’s more important than ever for us in the InfoSec community to call things out when we see them headed in the wrong direction. The media has always gone in the wrong direction with the term hacker. But to my utter astonishment, so has academia. I have to admit that I was beyond belief just the other day while studying for my CCNA-Security certification, I’m thumbing along through one of my study guides published in 2018- this is current- and right there in Chapter Two the author goes into defining for his audience, the terms hackers and crackers. To the authors credit, he did correctly begin his spill by stating the two terms are often used interchangeably by the media but do not actually have the same meaning. However, to the authors discredit, he went on to define hackers as “individuals who attempt to break into secure systems to obtain knowledge about the systems and possibly use that knowledge to carry out pranks or commit crimes.“

This is not only incorrect, but it’s unacceptable. It doesn’t fit the accurate definition of what a hacker truly is. By the authors definition, he’s calling Anonymous hackers. By the authors definition, I may as well had went and typed into the search bar, “How to become Anonymous” and then proceeded along, 8 years later, a path to becoming a criminal.

Do you kinda see where I’m going with this? It’s 2018. We have kids searching for ways to become better and do better. I’m sure some of them are pondering things like hacking. What if one of these kids don’t go to the internet searching as I did but instead come across a security practitioner with a title who seems very authentic in their eyes, perhaps, an author of a CCNA-Security study guide and is told…..”hackers are criminals?”. Hmm. 

These kinda of things left unchecked seriously undermine the work that good people are trying to do for this world. It’s the same with other terms we have in the industry that may perhaps also need a little revision. White Hat, Black Hat, Gray Hat? Look, there’s an interesting one, Gray Hat. But isn’t the name of your company, org, blog, etc. called Grey Hat Developer, you say? Yes, it is. And we’re so far away from what someone has brought that term to mean and what we actually are that it would make my point exactly. Nonsense? Well, try Hacker High School out on for size. Left unchecked one would be led to believe that Hacker High School would be a spot where kids would go to learn to be umm….criminals. Far from it.

Look, I can’t speak for the rest of the InfoSec community. But at Grey Hat Developer we are committed to making sure those we influence are properly educated on what these often misunderstood terms mean. Furthermore, what it takes to become a hacker should the individual aspire to take upon that journey themselves.

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(The remainder of this post is actually the original condensed version of this article which was titled, “Farewell, Crackers!”. Thus, if you aren’t familiar with the term cracker, I strongly urge you to give it a lookover whereas the above version 2.0 picks up where this left off)

A while ago an article was shared on Twitter by the account InfoSecHotSpot. This post isn’t about that 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…

http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html

http://www.hackerhighschool.org/

https://www.greyhatdev.com/grey-hat-developer/