in reply to Re: Perl Hacking
in thread Perl Hacking

Wasn't Matthew Broderick a Cracker in wargames? I was told (back in the 80's) that a Cracker was someone that broke into other computer systems illegally; and a Hacker was someone who had the ability to 'program'.

Consequently, a Hacker could be a Cracker, but that didn't mean that a Cracker could be a Hacker

Hacker, cracker, smacker, wacker, jacker, lacker, tracker, bracker...more tangent....

kristofer

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Re: Re: Re: Perl Hacking
by Marza (Vicar) on Jul 19, 2002 at 18:10 UTC

    By todays definition, yes. However, remember that back then there were no firewalls. You could access a mainframe directly. As it was once explained to me by an old Assembler/Systems guy. Hacker came from hacking the OS which was usually looking for holes to exploit. But it has changed since then. There is an effort to label such people as crackers. So the "real" definition doesnt matter anymore.

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