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HACKING INFORMATION

Hacker has several common meanings, the unifying characteristic of which is only that it refers to a person who is an avid computer enthusiast. It is most commonly used as a pejorative by the mass media to refer to a person who engages in illegal computer trespass, which is its original meaning, but it can also refer to people engaged in ethical hacking, to the members of the open source and free software community or to home computer hobbyists

At least three major hacker subcultures, characterized by their largely distinct historical development, use the term 'Hacker' in their jargon for self-identification. They are centered around different, but partially overlapping aspects of computers and have conflicting ideas about who may legitimately be called a hacker In computer security, a hacker is someone who focuses on security mechanisms. In common use, which was popularized by the mass media, that refers to someone who illegally breaks into computer and network systems. That is, the media portrays the 'hacker' as a villain. Nevertheless, parts of the subculture see their aim in correcting security problems and use the word in a positive sense. They operate under a code of the Hacker Ethic, in which it's acknowledged that breaking into other people's computers is bad, but that discovering and exploiting security mechanisms and breaking into computers is nevertheless an interesting aspect that can be done in an ethical and legal way. This use is contrasted by the different understanding of the word as a person who follows a spirit of playful cleverness and loves programming. It is found in an originally academic movement unrelated to computer security and most visibly associated with free software and open source. It also has a hacker ethic, based on the idea that writing software and sharing the result is a good idea, but only on a voluntary basis, and that information should be free, but that it's not up to the hacker to make it free by breaking into private computer systems. Academic hackers disassociate from the mass media's pejorative use of the word 'hacker' referring to computer security, and usually prefer the term 'cracker' for that meaning. In a third meaning, the term refers to computer hobbyists who push the limits of their software or hardware.
In computer security, a hacker is a person who specializes in work with the security mechanisms for computer and network systems. The subculture around such hackers is termed network hacker subculture, hacker scene or computer underground. While including those who endeavor to strengthen such mechanisms, it is more often used by the mass media and popular culture to refer to those who seek access despite these security measures. Accordingly, the term bears strong connotations that may be favorable or pejorative. The network hacker subculture initially developed in the context of phreaking during the 1960s and the microcomputer BBS scene of the 1980s. It is implicated with 2600: The Hacker Quarterly and the alt.2600 newsgroup. By 1983, hacking in the sense of breaking computer security had already been in use as computer jargon but there was no public awareness about such activities.However, the release of the movie WarGames that year raised the public belief that computer security hackers (especially teenagers) could be a threat to national security. This concern became real when a gang of teenage hackers in Milwaukee, Wisconsin known as The 414s broke into computer systems throughout the United States and Canada, including those of Los Alamos National Laboratory, Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and Security Pacific Bank. The case quickly grew media attention and 17-year-old Neal Patrick emerged as the spokesman for the gang, including a cover story in Newsweek entitled "Beware: Hackers at play", with Patrick's photograph on the cover. The Newsweek article appears to be the first use of the word hacker by the mainstream media in the pejorative sense. As a result of news coverage, congressman Dan Glickman called for an investigation and new laws about computer hacking. Neal Patrick testified before the U.S. House of Representatives on September 26, 1983 about the dangers of computer hacking, and six bills concerning computer crime were introduced in the House that year.As a result of these laws against computer criminality, white hat, grey hat and black hat hackers try to distinguish themselves from each other, depending on the legality of their activities.

In the Open Source and Free Software hacker culture, a computer hacker is a person who enjoys designing software and building programs with a sense for aesthetics and playful cleverness. According to Eric S. Raymond, the Open source and Free Software hacker subculture developed in the 1960s among ‘academic hackers’minicomputers in computer science environments. After 1969 it fused with the technical culture of the pioneers of the Arpanet. One PDP-10 machine at MIT connected to the Arpanet provided an early hacker meeting point. It was called AI and ran ITS. After 1980 the subculture coalesced with the culture of Unix, and after 1987 with elements of the early microcomputer hobbyists that themselves had connections to radio amateurs in the 1920s. Since the mid-1990s, it has been largely coincident with what is now called the free software and open source movement.
Many programmers have been labeled "great hackers, but the specifics of who that label applies to is a matter of opinion. Certainly major contributors to computer science such as Edsger Dijkstra and Donald Knuth, as well as the inventors of popular software such as Linus Torvalds (Linux), and Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson (the C programming language) are likely to be included in any such list; see also List of programmers. People primarily known for their contributions to the consciousness of the academic hacker culture include Richard Stallman, the founder of the free software movement and the GNU project, president of the Free Software Foundation and author of the famous EmacsGNU Compiler Collection (GCC), and Eric S. Raymond, one of the founders of the Open Source Initiative and writer of the famous text The Cathedral and the Bazaar and many other essays, maintainer of the Jargon File (which was previously maintained by Guy L. Steele, Jr.).
Within the academic hacker culture, the term hacker is also used for a programmer who reaches a goal by employing a series of modifications to extend existing code or resources. In this sense, it can have a negative connotation of using kludges to accomplish programming tasks that are ugly, inelegant, and inefficient. This derogatory form of the noun "hack" is even used among users of the positive sense of "hacker" (some argue that it should not be, due to this negative meaning; others argue that some kludges can, for all their ugliness and imperfection, still have "hack value"). In a very universal sense, a hacker also means someone who makes things work beyond perceived limits in a clever way in general, for example reality hackers.

ABOUT JOHN THE RIPPER:~

John the Ripper is a free password cracking software tool. Initially developed for the UNIX operating system, it currently runs on fifteen different platforms (11 architecture-specific flavors of Unix, DOS, Win32, BeOS, and OpenVMS). It is one of the most popular password testing/breaking programs as it combines a number of password crackers into one package, autodetects password hash types, and includes a customisable cracker. It can be run against various encrypted password formats including several crypt password hash types most commonly found on various Unix flavors (based on DES, MD5, or Blowfish), Kerberos AFS, and Windows NT/2000/XP/2003 LM hash. Additional modules have extended its ability to include MD4-based password hashes and passwords stored in LDAP, MySQL and others.

THIS IS JACK, JOHN THE RIPPER MASCOT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

TYPES OF HACKERS:~~~~

A white hat hacker, also rendered as ethical hacker, is, in the realm of information technology, a person who is ethically opposed to the abuse of computer systems. Realization that the Internet now represents human voices from around the world has made the defense of its integrity an important pastime for many. A white hat generally focuses on securing IT systems, whereas a black hat (the opposite) would like to break into them.

A black hat is a person who compromises the security of a computer system without permission from an authorized party, typically with malicious intent. The term white hat is used for a person who is ethically opposed to the abuse of computer systems, but is frequently no less skilled. The term cracker was coined by Richard Stallman to provide an alternative to using the existing word hacker for this meaning.The somewhat similar activity of defeating copy prevention devices in software which may or may not be legal in a country's laws is actually software cracking.

Blue Hat is a term used to refer to outside computer security consulting firms that are employed to bug test a system prior to its launch, looking for exploits so they can be closed. The term has also been associated with a roughly annual security conference by Microsoft, the unofficial name coming from the blue color associated with Microsoft employee badges.

A Grey Hat in the computer security community, refers to a skilled hacker who sometimes acts legally, sometimes in good will, and sometimes not. They are a hybrid between white and black hat hackers. They usually do not hack for personal gain or have malicious intentions, but may or may not occasionally commit crimes during the course of their technological exploits.

Hacktivism (a portmanteau of hack and activism) is often understood as the writing of code, or otherwise manipulating bit, to promote political ideology - promoting expressive politics, free speech, human rights, or information ethics. Acts of hacktivism are carried out in the belief that proper use of code will have leveraged effects similar to regular activism or civil disobedience. Fewer people can write code, but code affects more people.

In hacker culture, a script kiddie (occasionally script bunny, skidie, script kitty, script-running juvenile (SRJ), scriptkid, or similar) is a derogatory term used for an inexperienced malicious cracker who uses programs developed by others to attack computer systems, and deface and that their objective is to try to impress their friends or gain credit in underground cracker communities websites. It is generally assumed that script kiddies are kids who lack the ability to write sophisticated hacking programs on their own

lie_gang_admin	Latest page update: made by lie_gang_admin , Nov 7 2007, 12:02 PM EST (about this update About This Update Edited by lie_gang_admin 20 words added 41 words deleted view changes - complete history)
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