Hacker. An Introduction & Information.

Hacker. An Introduction & Information. there are many definition which related hacker words. some of them are :

• Hacker (computer security), someone involved in computer security/insecurity
• Hacker (programmer subculture), a programmer subculture originating in the US academia in the 1960s, which is nowadays mainly notable for the free software/open source movement
• Hacker (hobbyist), an enthusiastic home computer hobbyist
• Media hacker, someone who uses the media in new ways
• Reality hacker, similar to a computer hacker, but hacks the "real world"
• Wetware hacker, one who experiments with biological materials.

In computing, a hacker is a person in one of several distinct (but not completely disjoint) communities and subcultures:

1. People committed to circumvention of computer security. This primarily concerns unauthorized remote computer break-ins via a communication networks such as the Internet (black hats), but also includes those who debug or fix security problems (white hats), and the morally grey Grey hats. 2. A community of enthusiast computer programmers and systems designers, originated in the 1960s around the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)'s Tech Model Railroad Club (TMRC) and MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. This community is notable for launching the free software movement. The World Wide Web and the Internet itself are also hacker artifacts. 3. The hobbyist home computing community, focusing on hardware in the late 1970s (e.g. the Homebrew Computer Club ) and on software (computer games,software cracking .

The word hack doesn't really have 69 different meanings, according to MIT hacker Phil Agre. “In fact, hack has only one meaning, an extremely subtle and profound one which defies articulation. Which connotation is implied by a given use of the word depends in similarly profound ways on the context. Similar remarks apply to a couple of other hacker words, most notably random ". Hacking might be characterized as ‘an appropriate application of ingenuity’. Whether the result is a quick-and-dirty patchwork job or a carefully crafted work of art, you have to admire the cleverness that went into it. A hacker is often someone who creates and modifies computer software or computer hardware, including computer programming, administration, and security-related items. A hacker is also someone who modifies electronics, for example, ham radio transceivers, printers or even home sprinkler systems to get extra functionality or performance. The term usually bears strong connotations, but may be either favorable or denigrating depending on cultural context.

In computer programming, a hacker is a software designer and programmer who builds elegant, beautiful programs and systems. A hacker can also be a programmer who hacks or reaches a goal by employing a series of modifications to exploit or extend existing code or resources. For some, "hacker" has a negative connotation and refers to a person who "hacks" or uses kludges to accomplish programming tasks that are ugly, inelegant, and inefficient. This pejorative form of the noun "hack" is even used incorrectly among users of the positive sense of "hacker".
In computer security, a hacker is a person who specializes in work with the security mechanisms for computer and network systems. 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 them. In other technical fields, hacker is extended to mean a person who makes things work beyond perceived limits through their own technical skill, such as a hardware hacker, or reality hacker. In hacker culture, a hacker is a person who has attained a certain social status and is recognized among members of the culture for commitment to the culture's values and a certain amount of technical knowledge.

The hacker purposes.

The pejorative sense of hacker is becoming more prominent largely because the popular press has coopted the term to refer to individuals who gain unauthorized access to computer systems for the purpose of stealing and corrupting data. Hackers, themselves, maintain that the proper term for such individuals is cracker.

Source : wikipedia, http://catb.org, www.answerbag.com