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BEING A HACKER on the meaning of being a hacker by Valerio "Elf Qrin" Capello (www.ElfQrin.com) Copyright (C) 1999 Valerio Capello First written: 23JAN2000 v1.1en 26MAR2000 This is a translation from the original Italian version v1.5 r23JAN2000 (first written: 31AUG1999-09SEP1999) Supervisor for the English language: SirD. Latest version available from: www.ElfQrin.com/docs/BeingHacker.php Other language versions: Italian - German - Bulgarian
Another idiot has been locked up because of committing a senseless act with little or no thought to the consequences. Law enforcement needs to look good, the news becomes public domain and the press is unleashed, using attention grabbing headlines like: "Computer terrorist busted", or better, a "hacker". Not only is the term misused, but it is usually only understood to be a mere synonym for "computer pirate", which is not only limitive, but completely wrong. Few people, even those who would define themselves as such, really know what "being a hacker" means. The WWWebster Online Dictionary, at the "hacker" entry says: Main Entry: hackerAmong the various meanings quoted above, (besides definition 1, which is obvious...), definition 4 is the one which generally corresponds to the idea of "the hacker" that the majority of people have, while definition 3, is the one which is actually closer to the real meaning of "hacker", even if it is still rather limiting.
A dictionary rarely gives a definative answer, but it is always a good start. The on-line hacker Jargon File, version 2.9.10, 01 JUL 1992 (part of the Project Gutenberg), at the "hacker" entry says: :hacker: [originally, someone who makes furniture with an axe] n. 1. A person who enjoys exploring the details of programmable systems and how to stretch their capabilities, as opposed to most users, who prefer to learn only the minimum necessary.Since this is a specific dictionary, the definition of hacker here is closer to its original meaning, even if it is necessary to extrapolate it from the varied proposed meanings in order to obtain the closest and most faithfull interpretation.
A hacker is a person that loves to study all things in depth (definition 1), especially the more apparently meaningless details, to discover hidden peculiarities, new features and weakness in them. For example, it is possible to hack a book, by using it to equalize the legs of a table, or to use the sharp edge of one of its pages to cut something. The main point being that it is used for more than it's conventional function of being read. But more than this, a hacker soon learns that the same techniques used for exploiting computer systems can be used to manipulate people. This is the so-called social hacking. With a little skilled psychology, the masters of "social hacking" can convince other people to do what they want (within limits of course, and depending on the abilities of the "social hacker"), in order to obtain the information they require. This may sound like an unusual and unatural practise, but once you take into account that this is performed quite regularly, in everyday life, by girlfriends, friends and teachers etc. to obtain what they want from others, it's not that strange, even if hackers do use a little more skill and technique.
A hacker is certainly a programming maniac, (definition 2): once a technique has been discovered, it is necessary to write a program that exploits it. Definition 3 may be considered apart: a person that qualifies for this definition is not neccasarily a real hacker, but a very experienced person with a good knowledge, who is not neccasarily able to develop hacker techniques. To make it clearer, think about the differences between a good author and someone that appreciates a good book. Definition 7, together with definition 1, are the ones that get closer to the real essence of the hacker. To study a system, to discover weaknesses, the peculiarities and hidden features of it, and then use them to go beyond its limits, with creativeness and imagination. This, in a certain way, brings us directly to definition 8. The person with these skills can use his knowledge to try to access information to which he doesn't have the right to access, and here the discourse gets complicated, because for a hacker there is no information which he does not have the right to access. We will get back to this point later, when we will speak about the "hacker ethic". Finally, although it has nothing to do with the character of the hacker, I would like to attract attention to definition 6; for a hacker, the term hacker is always positive: if he speaks of a "hacker of astronomy", he speaks of a true expert of that subject. Contrary to this, in everyday language, according to definition 2 of the WWWebster dictionary, a "hacker" in a certain field is a person that is not skilled in that specific field. After giving the definitions, the Jargon File provides more information on the meaning of the word "hacker": The term `hacker' also tends to connote membership in the global community [...]. It also implies that the person described is seen to subscribe to some version of the hacker ethic [...].But, perhaps more than anything else, curiosity and above average intelligence are the signatures of a true hacker. The hacker has an almost physical need of knowledge of any kind. The hacker is most certainly a voracious reader, even if his preference is only for scientific matters or science fiction, and generally one would find many shelves full of books in his room. But a hacker is not satisfied by the "ready made" knowledge, of the information that he finds in the books written for the average person, a hacker wants it all, and collects all possible information. Schools are institutions that are not able to furnish all the information that a hacker needs. The governments and all the public or private institutions have the tendency to furnish the least necessary information. About this point, Steven Levy in "Hackers, Heroes of the Computer Revolution" (written in 1984), affirms that the hackers "are possessed not merely by curiosity, but by a positive *lust to know.*"
This idea is even clearer in these excerpts took from what is a considered "the hacker's manifesto": "The Conscience of to Hacker" (sometimes erroneously reported, in a nearly prophetic sense, as "Mentor's Last Words"), written by The Mentor on January 8th 1986, and published for the first time on the e-zine Phrack, Volume One, Issue 7, Phile 3. [...]In these words, you will see the frustration of living in a defective world, that deprives the individuals that wish to rise above the mediocre, of the very information and resources they desire, to know what is kept hidden, and it condemns them hypocritically as criminals.
But the desperate search of knowledge is only one of the characteristics of the hacker. Another sure one is the pursute of extreme perfection.
An interesting article, is the one that narrates the history of the first hackers, and of how they developed "Spacewar!"
(the first videogame in history, born as a demo for the TX-0, meant as a "killer application" for this computer, with all its features exploitable), is "The origin of Spacewar", written by J. M. Graetz, and published in the August, 1981 issue of Creative Computing magazine. One of the forces driving the dedicated hacker is the quest for elegance. It is not sufficient to write programs that work. They must also be "elegant," either in code or in function -- both, if possible. An elegant program does its job as fast as possible, or is as compact as possible, or is as clever as possible in taking advantage of the particular features of the machine in which it runs, and (finally) produces its results in an aesthetically pleasing form without compromising either the results or operation of other programs associated with it.But the elegance and the perfection of hackers is not always comprehensible to the average individual. A hacker can often be in ecstasy reading some code written by another hacker, admiring his ability and "tasting" his style, as if he was reading poetry. For example, normally to exchange the content of two variables (a and b, in this case), the statement most commonly used is this, which uses a third temporary variable: dummy = a : a = b : b = dummyThe following method, instead, doesn't need the third variable, because it exploits a mathematical peculiarity of the boolean operator XOR: a = a XOR b : b = a XOR b : a = a XOR bEven if this system is at least three times slower than the first one because it requires the execution of three mathematical operations, (however it allows the saving of memory that the third variable would normally occupy), a hacker will surely admire the ingeniousness and the elegance of this method, to him it assumes the taste of a Japanese haiku. Talking about the perfectionism of the hackers, in "Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution" written by Steven Levy in 1984, in the chapter 2 ("The Hacker Ethic"), we read: Hackers believe that essential lessons can be learned about the systems--about the world--from taking things apart, seeing how they work, and using this knowledge to create new and even more interesting things. They resent any person, physical barrier, or law that tries to keep them from doing this.It's just in the name of such principle that the Linux operating system and the Gnu C compiler have been developed, their code is open and available to be changed and modified by anyone. Lately, many important commercial software producers also started moving in this direction, as Netscape: Netscape Communicator 5, will, in fact be the first software, originally born as a "closed" commercial product, to be developed with this type of philosophy. A hacker is never satisfied with the default settings of a program or of the custom installations, he always has to open the configuration menu and set the options to get the maximum performance, and to make the product work as close as possible to his "way". A hacker must be able to use, to modify and to check all the possible features of a program.
But after all, what motivates hackers? Why do they create programs that exploit advanced techniques and then distribute them free? And why do they freely distribute knowledge that was incredibly difficult to obtain? What makes people write software and distribute it for free? Vanity, you said? Well, maybe.. But after all, what is this business all about? Is it all about money? Ask anyone - it's not. Most people I know in the industry will tell you that.In short, it's not about money. It's about feeling free to do what you want, and, just possibly, to find someone that appreciates your work.
The true hacker doesn't have morals, and he would never censor information or ideas of any kind. An initiative of the Italian priest Don Fortunato di Noto, ( fortunad@sistemia.it ) who in January of 1998 formed the "Committee of resistance against the Pedophiles", and who asked for the help of the hacker community to unmask, capture and close the sites of the pedophiles on the Internet, failed miserably as it was only supported by self-acclaimed hackers without any skill.
Contrary to the complete lack of moral judgement (but, above all, of moralism) of hackers, lies a deep ethical sense, that is something allmost "religious" in most hackers. :hacker ethic, the: n.Breaking into a system is not seen by the hacker as a criminal action, but like a challenge. The idea is not to damage the "victim", but to find a way to penetrate its defenses. It's the intellectual challenge, the curiosity, the will to experiment and to explore, this is what moves the hacker, not the will to damage someone or something, and not even to obtain personal profit. In another writing of The Mentor, "A Novice's Guide to Hacking- 1989 edition", dated December 1988, the author opens the essay with a call to the ethics of the category, to which follows a list of "suggestions for guidelines to follow to ensure that not only you stay out of trouble, but you pursue your craft without damaging the computers you hack into or the companies who own them": As long as there have been computers, there have been hackers. In the 50's at the Massachusets Institute of Technology (MIT), students devoted much time and energy to ingenious exploration of the computers. Rules and the law were disregarded in their pursuit for the 'hack'. Just as they were enthralled with their pursuit of information, so are we. The thrill of the hack is not in breaking the law, it's in the pursuit and capture of knowledge.In a file titled "The Hotmail Hack" written by Digital Assassin of the "United Underground" (or "U2", for short), in which a weakness of the HotMail system is illustrated, through which it is possible to enter into the mailbox of another person, the author, at a certain point interrupts the explanation with these words: ....but before I tell you how to use that line, I'm going to side track for a little theory behind this hack. Because there's NO point in a hack, if you don't know how it works. That is the whole idea of hacking, to find out how systems work.These are clear examples of what the real intent of a hacker is when he breaks a system. It's very close to the idea of a child that opens a toy to see how it works. The difference is that the hacker tries not to destroy the toy (aside from the fact that the toy is not his own...). Anyway, let's see the specific definition of the "cracker", according to the Jargon File: :cracker: n. One who breaks security on a system. Coined ca. 1985 by hackers in defense against journalistic misuse of {hacker} (q.v., sense 8). An earlier attempt to establish `worm' in this sense around 1981--82 on USENET was largely a failure.Furthermore, about the "cracking" itself, the Jargon File says: :cracking: n. The act of breaking into a computer system; what a {cracker} does. Contrary to widespread myth, this does not usually involve some mysterious leap of hackerly brilliance, but rather persistence and the dogged repetition of a handful of fairly well-known tricks that exploit common weaknesses in the security of target systems. Accordingly, most crackers are only mediocre hackers.However, This is a superficial and reductive vision. In fact, as it is easily imaginable, there exist people, that are as experienced with computers and as thirsty of knowledge, that however don't have any respect of the hacker ethic and don't hesitate to perform actions meant to damage computer systems or other people. They are the so-called Dark-side hackers. This term derives from George Lucas' "Star Wars". A Dark-side hacker, just like Darth Vader, is "seduced by the dark side of the Force". It has nothing to do with the common idea of "good" and "bad", but it's closer to the idea of "legal" and "chaotic" in Dungeons&Dragons: In substance, the dark-side hackers are accorded the same dignity and recognized as having the ability of a hacker, but their orientation makes them a dangerous element for the community. A more common definition, reserved for those that damage someone else's computer systems without drawing any benefit from it, (therefore for pure stupidity or evilness), it is that of Malicious hackers. More recent versions of the Jargon File (in which some most obsolete terms have been removed), as the version 4.0.0, 24 JUL 1996, makes clear, not only the distinction between hacker and cracker, but also between the entire hack scenes and other parallel realities, like piracy, and the "warez d00dz", who collect an impressive amount of software (games and applications, or better said "gamez" and "appz"), that they are never likely to use, and whose greatest pride is to get software, break its protections, and distribute it on their website before their rival crew, where possible, within the same day it was released ("0-day warez"). One could think that the Jargon File speaks only in theory, and that it describes the hacker ethic in a fantastic and utopian way. This is not so, hackers really are attached to their principles. The following is a practical example concerning one of the most famous hacker crews, the LOD (Legions Of Doom, that takes its name from the group of baddies in the series of cartoons of Superman and his Superfriends), of which The Mentor was also a member during the years 1988-89 (the already cited author of "The conscience of a Hacker"). In "The History of LOD/H", Revision #3 May 1990, written by Lex Luthor (founder of the crew, from the name of the baddie in the movie Superman I), and published on their e-zine "The LOD/H Technical Journal", Issue #4, released on May 20, 1990 (File 06 of 10), we can read: Of all 38 members, only one was forcefully ejected. It was found out that Terminal Man [member dof the LOD/H in 1985] destroyed data that was not related to covering his tracks. This has always been unacceptable to us, regardless of what the media and law enforcement tries to get you to think.Yet, not all agree upon the same principles, and there are some "grey areas": for example, taking possession of objects that allow you to access information, or pursuing a personal purpose, can be considered "ethical" by some. A specific example could be "grabbing": the theft of things like keys, magnetic cards, manuals or technical schemes, anyway this is a debatable activity, since a hacker prefers to copy rather to subtract, not only to not damage the "victim", but also to avoid leaving traces of his intrusion. A more acceptable and legal variant is "trashing", that consists in looking inside the garbage of the subject, searching for objects and/or useful information.
But breaking into computer systems is only a small activity amongst the many things that hackers are involved in, and the aversion against the virtual vandal actions are a small part of the hacker ethic. Something new was coalescing around the TX-0: a new way of life, with a philosophy, an ethic, and a dream.Shortly, Steven Levy sums up the "hacker ethic" this way: Access to computers -- and anything which might teach you something about the way the world works -- should be unlimited and total. Always yield to the Hands-On imperative.
From "The Hacker Crackdown - Law and Disorder on the Electronic Frontier" by Bruce Sterling, Bantam Books, 1992. (ISBN 0-553-08058-X, paperback: ISBN 0-553-56370-X, released as free electronic text for non-commercial purposes) There are hackers today who fiercely and publicly resist any besmirching of the noble title of hacker. Naturally and understandably, they deeply resent the attack on their values implicit in using the word "hacker" as a synonym for computer-criminal.If the differentiation between hacker, cracker and dark-side hacker can result a very tiny distinction for the ones who live outside of the computer scene, nobody, especially a journalist, should confuse a hacker with the poor idiot that was locked up for using, with no thought to the consequences, programs that he found somewhere. (even if using the term "hacker" does sell more newspapers... The difference between hackers and journalists is that the aforementioned have ethics, the latter, not even a sense of modesty... but this is often simply mere ignorance). Let's take as an example the following article published on the Italian newspaper "L'Unione Sarda" ( http://www.unionesarda.it/ ), by Luigi Almiento ( almiento@unionesarda.it ). In a few words, lieutenant Spoto succeeds in showing his complete ignorance of the subject: he gives an abominable definition of ICQ, defines Netbus as a virus rather than a trojan (which means he doesn't have any idea of how it works), and still not being satisfied with this, attributes it with a contagiousness similar to the Ebola virus: to be infected simply by connecting to an Internet address sounds like something supernatural. Then, he shamelessy concludes with the invitation "If anyone has had contact with Harris, and thinks that their files may have been forced, they can come to us at the Police Station". If everyone at the Police Station are as experienced as he is, it would be preferable to keep the Harris' "virus" rather than allowing them to put their hands anywhere near your computer.
Besides, these self-acclaimed hackers are almost never bust because of a police operation, (unless they caused a lot of trouble), but because they have the stupid habit of boasting of their actions in chatrooms or even in real life. Often in front of total strangers,
that are often police officers or people close to the law enforcement environment, (such as the child or the girlfriend of a police officer).
The hacker is the one that develops the exploit, and eventually creates a program based on this expoit. People that blindly use these programs because they found them on the Internet, or even worse, because a friend passed them on to them, are merely lamers, that only have a vague idea of how to use the tool they have in their hands and they know nothing about computer systems, programming, or how to cover their tracks. Often these self-acclaimed hackers, self infect themselves with a virus or a trojan they just downloaded, due to their incapabilities.
The fact is, that up to the early '80s, computers were only intended for hackers, specialized personnel or students. Only later did they appear on the desks of offices and in houses. The first home computers replaced the primitive consoles of videogames like the Atari 2600, the Intellivision and the Colecovision (the revolution was lead by the Commodore 64 and the Sinclair ZX Spectrum), but still across the whole world there was a "computer culture" throughout the '80s, there were published magazines that taught programming (mainly BASIC, as well as Machine Code) and very advanced techniques worthy of the best hackers. Then during the '90s, Apple and Microsoft's dream started to come true, "a computer on every desk and in every home". The computer became a common appliance available to almost everybody, the general level of the magazines started to drop, and almost all were confined to publishing articles about the latest hardware and software, or advice on how to use commercial applications.
All those lamers-wannabe-hackers should better satisfy their needs with APEX v1.00 r10/8/91, a nice program written by Ed T. Toton III (however the original idea is older) that simulates the connection to different US government and military computers (like those of NORAD, or of NASA), among other things it is also possible to pretend that you are the President of the United States of America, and enter the system that controls the nuclear weapons.
But besides this, outside of the "criminal" context, something that bothers hackers is the ever increasing mass of self-claimed computer "experts", that actually don't know much more than how to turn on a computer and launch a program, and they fill their mouthes with loads of technical words about which they know nothing. I remember [...] When writing software was closer to art and magic than to business and/or just coding. I miss that now. What happened after that? Well, tons of fast graduates appeared who could only do Basic or Clipper/DBase programming, who pretended to be the best. They could wear suites and had money and relatives... I called them nephews. How many times were you in the situation when you gave the best offer, and you simply feel you HAD to write this software - but in the end your client says something like: "I'm really sorry, but I just got a call from my wife and her nephew works for this company in Nebraska who are certified Basic engineers so we'll have to give the contract to them?" The nephews produced terrible software which led to terrible disappointments in the industry ('I've invested so much money in computers and it's not really working for me').Sadly, a crowd of nephews are already working, with or without certified degrees, and armed with programs like Front Page or Publisher creating websites, filling their big mouths with words like FTP and client-server application, even if they don't know what they mean or what they are talking about. Luckily, the Net is large and, - at least for the moment, - it generates its own rules by itself. There is room for everyone.
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