In computing, a hacker is any skilled computer expert that uses their technical knowledge to overcome a problem. While "hacker" can refer to any computer programmer, the term has become associated in popular culture with a "security hacker", someone who, with their technical knowledge, uses bugs or exploits to break into computer systems. Types Hacker culture Hacker culture, an idea derived from a community of enthusiast computer programmers and systems designers, in the 1960s around the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Tech Model Railroad Club and MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. The hobbyist home computing community, focusing on hardware in the late 1970s and on software in the 1980s/1990s. Later, this would go on to encompass many new definitions such as art, and Life hacking. Security related hackers Security hacker. People involved with circumvention of computer security. White hats are hackers employed with the efforts of keeping data safe from other hackers by looking for loopholes and hackable areas. This type of hacker typically gets paid quite well, and receives no jail time due to the consent of the company that hired them. Grey hats are hackers who are neither good nor bad, and often include people who hack 'for fun' or to 'troll'. They may both fix and exploit, though grey hats are usually associated with black hat hackers. Black hats or crackers are hackers with malicious intentions, and steal, exploit, and sell data. They are usually motivated by personal gain. A cracker is someone who knows the web similar to hackers and doesn't use the internet for gaining any extensive knowledge and are professionals in what they do but they are not the white collar heroes as security hackers are. Crackers use their skills to earn themselves profits or to benefit from criminal gain. Crackers find exploits to systems securities and vulnerabilities but often use them to their advantage by either selling the fix to the company themselves or keeping the exploit and selling it to other black hat hackers to steal information or gain royalties. Hacker definition ambiguities Today, mainstream usage of "hacker" mostly refers to computer criminals, due to the mass media usage of the word since the 1980s. This includes what hacker slang calls "script kiddies, " people breaking into computers using programs written by others, with very little knowledge about the way they work. This usage has become so predominant that the general public is unaware that different meanings exist. While the self-designation of hobbyists as hackers is acknowledged by all three kinds of hackers, and the computer security hackers accept all uses of the word, people from the programmer subculture consider the computer intrusion related usage incorrect, and emphasize the difference between the two by calling security breakers "crackers" . Currently, "hacker" is used in two main conflicting ways: #as someone who is able to subvert computer security; if doing so for malicious purposes, the person can also be called a cracker. #an adherent of the technology and programming subculture. The controversy is usually based on the assumption that the term originally meant someone messing about with something in a positive sense, that is, using playful cleverness to achieve a goal.
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