Is Hacking Wrong?

[Brynet-Inc]

Your right i will leave

Don't leave Dex.. who will I have left to pick on?

j/k..

Have fun and good luck on your project

(BTW - It's you're not your...)

[Alboin]

(BTW - It's you're not your...)

Hmm? What does that mean? It doesn't make any sense...."It is you are not your"?

Edit: Ahem....I figured it out....you're and your are not actual words in the sentence, but nouns, really....

[Brynet-Inc]

I know It's so very hard to comprehend me...

[anon19287473]

I've been thinking recently, is hacking wrong? There are some sites on the internet (HackThisSite.org that give you opportunities to hack with their permission, which IMHO isn't wrong. But is it wrong to hack someone else's computer, without them knowing? What if you're hacking a criminal?

This is all hypothetical and all, but it should make for good discussion.

This is covered in the Hacker Ethic.

hacker ethic: n.

1. The belief that information-sharing is a powerful positive good, and that it is an ethical duty of hackers to share their expertise by writing open-source code and facilitating access to information and to computing resources wherever possible.

2. The belief that system-cracking for fun and exploration is ethically OK as long as the cracker commits no theft, vandalism, or breach of confidentiality.

Both of these normative ethical principles are widely, but by no means universally, accepted among hackers. Most hackers subscribe to the hacker ethic in sense 1, and many act on it by writing and giving away open-source software. A few go further and assert that all information should be free and any proprietary control of it is bad; this is the philosophy behind the GNU project.

Sense 2 is more controversial: some people consider the act of cracking itself to be unethical, like breaking and entering. But the belief that ‘ethical’ cracking excludes destruction at least moderates the behavior of people who see themselves as ‘benign’ crackers (see also samurai, gray hat). On this view, it may be one of the highest forms of hackerly courtesy to (a) break into a system, and then (b) explain to the sysop, preferably by email from a superuser account, exactly how it was done and how the hole can be plugged — acting as an unpaid (and unsolicited) tiger team.

The most reliable manifestation of either version of the hacker ethic is that almost all hackers are actively willing to share technical tricks, software, and (where possible) computing resources with other hackers. Huge cooperative networks such as Usenet, FidoNet and the Internet itself can function without central control because of this trait; they both rely on and reinforce a sense of community that may be hackerdom's most valuable intangible asset.

from The Jargon Files

[Tyler]

Hmm... eric also believes we should go around wearing badges with his "Hacker Emblem" in order to show support for a culture he doesn't realise he had no part in... So i don't think we can listen to the Jargon File much anymore

[~]

Even so, I think that he is right in many, many practical things. Maybe I start to disagree when it starts to turn out into an lifestyle ideology. I don't see "hacking" as something so dramatic. It's just like a very hard profession and you can still live on your own style.

And, hacking isn't wrong whenever you don't use it as a means to lose your time massively just to laugh on the faces and displays of those websites you have managed to crack.

Hacking is excelent, particularly in OS development, because you will know the current engineering flaws and will be able to avoid them in your OS; you will be able to try to crack your own OS looking for those and further bugs and will be able to fix the errors while you are in the "design" stage.

[Tyler]

I think you are interpreting Hacking as Cracking. Infact in the only places you mentioned method in that last sentence, you used the term Crack. Cracking in my opinion is not even related to Hacking. They have simply recieved a bad name together because of people's fear of "Hackers". Hackers are basically Proffesional (In the none monetary sense) Programmers. As in highly technical, good, and extremely talented. Specifc methods, areas, networking all have nothing todo with it.

No one who could ever be associated with hacking believes it is related to ethics, and those who relate ethics have no idea what it is.

[~]

Well, writing those spambots could be also taken as cracking: making a killingly effort to make a program capable of reading deformed text images and posting and even replying rudimentarily and building up working source code. That could be used for something more useful like managing automatically a source code repository and ordering it, and many more things.

I think also that there can't be hacking without cracking. Why? Because when you hack many times you need to go into trial and error, breaking here and then learning from your correct points as well as from you errors. After that, you can build up a custom working base for the many miscellaneous topics that give shape to an engineering piece.

It's really not very complicated in these terms, it's just the way things are. Just like the OS testing example, if I don't try to crack with cruelty my own creations I will never know which are their rupture points to fix them even before releasing them. I am convinced that a hacker is very capable of this, and much more.

[Tyler]

Now your mixing Cracking with the verb "to crack"

[~]

I really don't put attention to the way I use verbs, but just the way I would do my work in a particular case as well as some rapid examples.

[Combuster]

About the usage of cracking:

Well, writing those spambots could be also taken as cracking: making a killingly effort to make a program capable of reading deformed text images and posting and even replying rudimentarily and building up working source code. That could be used for something more useful like managing automatically a source code repository and ordering it, and many more things.

Cracking is not about harassing or spamming.

I think also that there can't be hacking without cracking. Why? Because when you hack many times you need to go into trial and error, breaking here and then learning from your correct points as well as from you errors. After that, you can build up a custom working base for the many miscellaneous topics that give shape to an engineering piece.

Cracked code is not synonymous to buggy code.

It's really not very complicated in these terms, it's just the way things are. Just like the OS testing example, if I don't try to crack with cruelty my own creations I will never know which are their rupture points to fix them even before releasing them. I am convinced that a hacker is very capable of this, and much more.

Testing is legal, cracking is not.

Now if only people bothered to read wikipedia ...

[~]

About the usage of cracking:

Well, writing those spambots could be also taken as cracking: making a killingly effort to make a program capable of reading deformed text images and posting and even replying rudimentarily and building up working source code. That could be used for something more useful like managing automatically a source code repository and ordering it, and many more things.

Cracking is not about harassing or spamming.

How can be called the effort itself of making such software? Hacking? Regular programming?

I think also that there can't be hacking without cracking. Why? Because when you hack many times you need to go into trial and error, breaking here and then learning from your correct points as well as from you errors. After that, you can build up a custom working base for the many miscellaneous topics that give shape to an engineering piece.

Cracked code is not synonymous to buggy code.

I didn't mean to make a reference to buggy code due to a trial and error process. I'd altogether call it "design stage", "debug phase" or "update process" instead of making any reference to hacking/cracking.

[Combuster]

Writing bots is not a bad thing. Some can be very useful. However, the most obvious bots are those who are intrusive. Wether they are built for the purpose (forum spambots), or abused (irc bots). Building a good bot can very well be considered hacking. Consequently using that bot for spamming however is just sad.
Basically, the only cracking involved in spamming is taking over other computers to use their ip. The rest is just in violation of common ethics.

Consider p2p software - writing one is allowed even though the masses will use it for illegal downloads.

Regarding the second matter, I think you missed my point:

I think also that there can't be hacking without cracking.

I think there can - like I said testing is not cracking even though the methods involved may be similar.

[Tyler]

1393 (at the latest): the word had also acquired the meaning of a horse for hire and also "prostitute".

Such a simple time, if only we new how to maintain meanings. I could be hacker! One who hires horses obviously

[ehird]

Hmm... eric also believes we should go around wearing badges with his "Hacker Emblem" in order to show support for a culture he doesn't realise he had no part in... So i don't think we can listen to the Jargon File much anymore

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THE JARGON FILE            2009
Sorry, I am too damn awesome and important to the open source community to continue maintaining this. Meanwhile, please see http://catb.org/~esr/guns-rule-woo.html