“Hacker is a person who knows how to build stuff before breaking it”
A hacker is a person who looks at the world differently by using a tool or a product for a purpose other than it was originally intended.
Consider this example, of a sugar packet at a cafe.
Have you ever used it for apart from sweetening your tea?
Maybe leveling the table. Maybe disposing of your gum. Maybe making mini card-like house to entertain your friends. The concept of taking the sugar packet and then repurposing and redefining its use is what a hacker does.
There is a huge misconception of the word “hacker”, due to its unfairly negative connotation from being portrayed in the media as people who break into computers and do illegal stuff.
In reality, hacking simply means building something quickly or testing the boundaries of what may be done. Like most things, it can be used for good or bad, but the vast majority of hackers I’ve met tend to be idealistic people who want to have a positive impact on the world.
There are many definitions for “hacker.” ask this question from a phalanx and you’ll get a new answer every time because “more mouths will have more talks” and this is
the reason behind the different definitions of hackers
In the early 1990s, the word “hacker” was used to describe a great programmer, someone who was able to build complex logic’s. Unfortunately, over time the word gained negative hype, and the media started referring to a hacker as someone who discovers new ways of hacking into a system, be it a computer system or a programmable logic controller, someone who is capable of hacking into banks, stealing credit card data, etc. This is the image that's created by the media and this is just unfair as, everything contains a positive and a negative aspect to it.
What the media has been highlighting is only the negative aspect; the people who are protecting organizations by responsible revealing vulnerabilities aren’t highlighted.
However, if you look into the media’s definition of a hacker, you would notice some common characteristics, like creativity, the ability to solve complex problems, out of the box thinking, new ways of compromising targets etc….
Therefore, the term hacker can been broken down into 3 types:
1. White hat hacker -This kind of hacker is often referred to as a security professional or security researcher or ethical hackers. Such hackers are employed by an organization and are permitted to attack an organization to seek out vulnerabilities that an attacker might be able to exploit.
2. Black hat hacker -Also known as a cracker, this kind of hacker is referred to as a bad guy, who uses his or her knowledge for negative purposes. These are the people often referred by the media as hackers.
3. Gray hat hacker -This kind of hacker is an intermediate between a white hat and a black hat hacker. For instance, a gray hat hacker would work as a security professional for an organization and responsibly disclose everything to them; however, he or she might leave a backdoor to access it later and might also sell the confidential information, obtained during the compromise of a company’s target server, to competitors.
Who is a hacker is one that to be determined by the actions he does. For example, in this digitally revolutionizing age, one of the most difficult and highest paid jobs are that of ethical hackers, cyber forensics..etc. FBI Cyber Division, the most advanced cyber division in the world, is where daily, million of lives are being saved, where daily countless good deeds are being done on a scale of unimaginable depth by a hacker.
Sadly the media and the people of the world are not interested to spread these facts, and the illiteracy of the people on these topics have created a fictional untrue status of hacker as bad person. So friends understand what it means to be a hacker and what he does for the world, for he is someone who lives in the shadow and shines light on the injustice of the world.
© Mr.Joseph