My brain has been completely fried by the American racialization of people because my first reaction to reading that title was “well, calling them a racial slur is not very nice”
OP is aware that the term hackers had, and still has, a completely different meaning in the community it originated from. A real hacker is someone with the skill to modify a codebase to suit their needs. The corruption of the term by corporate media is an attempt to steal the fundamental human right to share one’s digital work freely by labeling these people and their work as criminal. Hacking means modifying source code to suit your specific needs. It could be used to refer to the efforts of someone learning to become a kernel developer or it could be someone modifying the software source code in ways that are not suitable to share with others, such as features that may be incompatible with some systems or features.
Cracking has long been proposed by hackers as a more appropriate term describing a bad actor attempting to gain unauthorized access to a system.
It seems pedantic at first and in my simple explanation here too, but if you look into the details, philosophy, politics, and people where this term originated from, then look at the opposition and how they profited, and finally look at the state of current society and the internet, you will likely see this as, at least mildly, offensive. Like, I still misuse the term as if it has dual meanings, but anyone using it correctly gets my attention right away.
As someone who works in cybersecurity, I do not know anyone who uses the term cracker. Everyone I know refers to themselves and other people in the industry as hackers.
My brain has been completely fried by the American racialization of people because my first reaction to reading that title was “well, calling them a racial slur is not very nice”
OP is aware that the term hackers had, and still has, a completely different meaning in the community it originated from. A real hacker is someone with the skill to modify a codebase to suit their needs. The corruption of the term by corporate media is an attempt to steal the fundamental human right to share one’s digital work freely by labeling these people and their work as criminal. Hacking means modifying source code to suit your specific needs. It could be used to refer to the efforts of someone learning to become a kernel developer or it could be someone modifying the software source code in ways that are not suitable to share with others, such as features that may be incompatible with some systems or features.
Cracking has long been proposed by hackers as a more appropriate term describing a bad actor attempting to gain unauthorized access to a system.
It seems pedantic at first and in my simple explanation here too, but if you look into the details, philosophy, politics, and people where this term originated from, then look at the opposition and how they profited, and finally look at the state of current society and the internet, you will likely see this as, at least mildly, offensive. Like, I still misuse the term as if it has dual meanings, but anyone using it correctly gets my attention right away.
Safecracker is an example of the correct term being in use and somehow people don’t have s problem with that.
Great explanation, thanks
Huh, fascinating writeup. I’m gonna use crackers like this from now on.
As someone who works in cybersecurity, I do not know anyone who uses the term cracker. Everyone I know refers to themselves and other people in the industry as hackers.
I couldn’t figure out which brand of crackers was so invested in Reddit to demand ransom lol. Ritz means business apparently.