12 lines
555 B
Plaintext
12 lines
555 B
Plaintext
cracking
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n. [very common] The act of breaking into a computer system; what a cracker
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does. Contrary to widespread myth, this does not usually involve some
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mysterious leap of hackerly brilliance, but rather persistence and the
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dogged repetition of a handful of fairly well-known tricks that exploit
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common weaknesses in the security of target systems. Accordingly, most
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crackers are incompetent as hackers. This entry used to say 'mediocre', but
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the spread of rootkit and other automated cracking has depressed the average
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level of skill among crackers.
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