37 lines
4.7 KiB
HTML
37 lines
4.7 KiB
HTML
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1" standalone="no"?>
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<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><head><title>cracker</title><link rel="stylesheet" href="../../jargon.css" type="text/css"/><meta name="generator" content="DocBook XSL Stylesheets V1.61.0"/><link rel="home" href="../index.html" title="The Jargon File"/><link rel="up" href="../C.html" title="C"/><link rel="previous" href="crack-root.html" title="crack root"/><link rel="next" href="cracking.html" title="cracking"/></head><body><div class="navheader"><table width="100%" summary="Navigation header"><tr><th colspan="3" align="center">cracker</th></tr><tr><td width="20%" align="left"><a accesskey="p" href="crack-root.html">Prev</a> </td><th width="60%" align="center">C</th><td width="20%" align="right"> <a accesskey="n" href="cracking.html">Next</a></td></tr></table><hr/></div><dt><a id="cracker"/><dt xmlns="" id="cracker"><b>cracker</b>: <span xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" class="grammar">n.</span></dt></dt><dd><p> One who breaks security on a system. Coined ca. 1985 by hackers in
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defense against journalistic misuse of <a href="../H/hacker.html"><i class="glossterm">hacker</i></a> (q.v.,
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sense 8). An earlier attempt to establish <span class="firstterm">worm</span> in this sense around 1981--82 on Usenet
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was largely a failure.</p><p>Use of both these neologisms reflects a strong revulsion against the
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theft and vandalism perpetrated by cracking rings. The neologism
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“<span class="quote">cracker</span>” in this sense may have been influenced not so much
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by the term “<span class="quote">safe-cracker</span>” as by the non-jargon term
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“<span class="quote">cracker</span>”, which in Middle English meant an obnoxious person
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(e.g., “<span class="quote">What cracker is this same that deafs our ears / With this
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abundance of superfluous breath?</span>” — Shakespeare's King John, Act
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II, Scene I) and in modern colloquial American English survives as a barely
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gentler synonym for “<span class="quote">white trash</span>”.</p><p>While it is expected that any real hacker will have done some playful
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cracking and knows many of the basic techniques, anyone past
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<a href="../L/larval-stage.html"><i class="glossterm">larval stage</i></a> is expected to have outgrown the desire
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to do so except for immediate, benign, practical reasons (for example, if
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it's necessary to get around some security in order to get some work
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done).</p><p>Thus, there is far less overlap between hackerdom and crackerdom than
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the <a href="../M/mundane.html"><i class="glossterm">mundane</i></a> reader misled by sensationalistic
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journalism might expect. Crackers tend to gather in small, tight-knit,
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very secretive groups that have little overlap with the huge, open
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poly-culture this lexicon describes; though crackers often like to describe
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<span class="emphasis"><em>themselves</em></span> as hackers, most true hackers consider them
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a separate and lower form of life. An easy way for outsiders to spot
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the difference is that crackers use grandiose screen names that conceal
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their identities. Hackers never do this; they only rarely use
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<span class="foreignphrase"><i class="foreignphrase">noms de guerre</i></span> at all, and when they
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do it is for display rather than concealment.</p><p>Ethical considerations aside, hackers figure that anyone who can't
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imagine a more interesting way to play with their computers than breaking
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into someone else's has to be pretty <a href="../L/losing.html"><i class="glossterm">losing</i></a>. Some
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other reasons crackers are looked down on are discussed in the entries on
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<a href="cracking.html"><i class="glossterm">cracking</i></a> and <a href="../P/phreaking.html"><i class="glossterm">phreaking</i></a>. See
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also <a href="../S/samurai.html"><i class="glossterm">samurai</i></a>,
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<a href="../D/dark-side-hacker.html"><i class="glossterm">dark-side hacker</i></a>, and <a href="../H/hacker-ethic.html"><i class="glossterm">hacker ethic</i></a>. For a
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portrait of the typical teenage cracker, see
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<a href="../W/warez-d00dz.html"><i class="glossterm">warez d00dz</i></a>.</p></dd><div class="navfooter"><hr/><table width="100%" summary="Navigation footer"><tr><td width="40%" align="left"><a accesskey="p" href="crack-root.html">Prev</a> </td><td width="20%" align="center"><a accesskey="u" href="../C.html">Up</a></td><td width="40%" align="right"> <a accesskey="n" href="cracking.html">Next</a></td></tr><tr><td width="40%" align="left" valign="top">crack root </td><td width="20%" align="center"><a accesskey="h" href="../index.html">Home</a></td><td width="40%" align="right" valign="top"> cracking</td></tr></table></div></body></html>
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