Are you a hacker?

[Dr. Z]

The site is only semi-serious I hope (but this IS the internet, you never know!)

Hacking the site would be both funny and bad, mmkay.

/me boots up a machine...

[Stan_Lite]

[PEDANT]

Technically, it's all nonsense anyway. The term "Hacker" was originally coined to describe someone who is deeply interested in how the computer and OS works - basically a geek. The name for someone who breaks into other people's systems is "Cracker".

The following quote from here explains it much better than I can.

Originally Posted by searchwindowssecurity.techtarget.com

* A hacker is a person intensely interested in the arcane and recondite workings of any computer operating system. Hackers are most often programmers. As such, hackers obtain advanced knowledge of operating systems and programming languages. They might discover holes within systems and the reasons for such holes. Hackers constantly seek further knowledge, freely share what they have discovered, and never intentionally damage data.

* A cracker is one who breaks into or otherwise violates the system integrity of remote machines with malicious intent. Having gained unauthorized access, crackers destroy vital data, deny legitimate users service, or cause problems for their targets. Crackers can easily be identified because their actions are malicious.

[/PEDANT]

[Mark]

Blows own trumpet...

In the past I've deliberately set out to break into software licensing systems - and succeeded I might add (though I was asked to do it and the software got better security as a result - still not good enough as it turned out). Also written device drivers and such. So yes, I'm a hacker, and I don't need some half-baked site to tell me.

Cracking, however. That'd be a no then.

[MarcLister]

DRZ linked me to this last night. I thought it was a joke.

Reminds me of a story that a lecturer told me earlier this year. DRZ knows the guy.

Anyway for one of the modules we have to track the hops between us and an IP address given to us at random. In previous years this lecturer has made this module more interesting by challenging the students to "hack" each other. The first person to devise a trick to get another student's username and password got an extra 10% on the module.

So a few years ago someone did this. The victim realised what had happened but didn't realise who it was who had perpetrated this. So they contacted the FBI, I think.

The FBI investigated and contact the Greater Manchester Police who did some investigatin' of their own. They then knocked on the door of the student who did this at a very early hour in the morning to ask him what he'd been doing. Naturally his classic "oh its for a uni assignment" excuse wasn't quite expected so the GMP went to Uni and spoke to the lecturer to check the story out and were satisfied no malice was involved. The lecturer told me he was quite impressed that the student doing the tricking had managed to get not just the GMP involved but also the FBI and gave him extra marks for that!

[Jasper]

isn't the host -l command deemed as hacking now, too?

[Justsomebloke]

Originally Posted by MarcLister

The lecturer told me he was quite impressed that the student doing the tricking had managed to get not just the GMP involved but also the FBI and gave him extra marks for that!

What a Cool guy