Kind: captions
Language: en
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which of these people is most like a
hacker a burglar a vandal an inventor or
a
spy the answer completely depends on
whom you ask because the word hacker has
taken on all of these meanings and more
over the
years but it's the wrong question it's
like asking is a chisel something you
use to break into safes to deface
buildings or to carve
statues no the questions we should be
asking are what is hacking and why do
people do
it in the broadest possible terms
hacking is creative problem solving that
takes advantage of the properties of
things in unexpected ways so when
Galileo used curved glass to magnify the
stars that was a hack or when NASA
Engineers saved Apollo 13 with a book a
plastic bag and a roll of duct tape that
was a hack of course usually when
hacking comes up we're talking about
computer hacking but the idea is the
same computer hacking is just creative
problem solving that takes advant of the
properties of computers and networks in
unexpected ways for example phone
providers used to use tones and beeps to
get their phones to communicate with
their networks what they did not expect
was that hackers would figure out that
those tones could be imitated with toy
whistles found in Captain Crunch cial
boxes thereby bypassing the need to pay
for the
call so why do hackers hack many are
driven by intellectual curiosity they
want to learn how a system works to
discover its quirks and hidden secrets
they are like cave explorers who Venture
Into Darkness and see what they can find
Steve wnc one of the founders of Apple
started out like this like many hackers
his early Explorations inspired him to
start tinkering and
inventing other hackers are like the
security forces who want to defend their
fortresses of information they find the
chinks in the internet's armor like the
heart bed bug and Patch them up before
they can be used against you and of
course there are hackers with less than
noble intentions they can be motivated
by greed Fame Rebellion or the desire to
hurt others for cheap thrills these are
the hackers that media stories have
taught us to fear some of them are
Brilliant Minds gone astray but many of
these so-called hackers are just kids
who run programs that they don't
understand others are criminal
syndicates that may know more about
cheating and robbing people than
creative problem
solving there are also hackers who
operate in morally gray areas who might
steal information to expose corruption
or violate privacy in the name of
National Security they consider what
they're doing just and for the greater
good While others see their actions as
dishonorable and
wrong but assigning labels of right and
wrong or good and bad to hacking is no
more productive than pinning those
labels to a hammer it's how and why the
hammer is used to build or to destroy
that matters and that you must choose
for yourself hackers like hammers are
here to stay whether we like it or
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