« Back to blog

The Original Hacker (Duh!)

This had been said many times by many respectable individuals but main stream media refuse to accept and correct their mistakes. So I will just relay the message again here.

Around 1980, a new breed of computer-fed kids evolved, due to easy access to the Internet in the United States and Europe. They soon learned that they could break into other people's systems. Unfortunately, the media called them hackers and the name sort of stuck, when in fact hackers do not consider such illegal security breakers to be hackers, but crackers. Hackers build things; crackers break them! [1]

There is a community, a shared culture, of expert programmers and networking wizards that traces its history back through decades to the first time-sharing minicomputers and the earliest ARPAnet experiments. The members of this culture originated the term ‘hacker’. Hackers built the Internet. Hackers made the Unix operating system what it is today. Hackers run Usenet. Hackers make the World Wide Web work. If you are part of this culture, if you have contributed to it and other people in it know who you are and call you a hacker, you're a hacker. [2]

There is another group of people who loudly call themselves hackers, but aren't. These are people (mainly adolescent males) who get a kick out of breaking into computers and phreaking the phone system. Real hackers call these people ‘crackers’ and want nothing to do with them. Real hackers mostly think crackers are lazy, irresponsible, and not very bright, and object that being able to break security doesn't make you a hacker any more than being able to hotwire cars makes you an automotive engineer. Unfortunately, many journalists and writers have been fooled into using the word ‘hacker’ to describe crackers; this irritates real hackers no end. [3]

Hackers build things. Crackers (criminals) break things.


[1]  Berry F. Phillips, Member of the Computer Club of Oklahoma City http://www.tcs.org/ioport/apr05/hackers.htm

[2] Eric S. Raymond http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html

[3] Eric S. Raymond http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html