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All about hacking

Hacking is a well-known way of "crashing" a computer system. Hackers are skilled individuals who have great expertise in programming and computer operation. The term "hacker" originated at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA, in 1960 where skilled individuals with excellent Fortran programming language were called hackers.

In those days hackers comprised an elite group. Among the oldest hacker groups are the "Legion of Doom" based in the USA and the "Chaos Computer Club", based in Germany. A magazine called "2600: The Hacker Quarterly" still continues to be a popular magazine among the hacker community. To these people, hacking was a means of finding out how the computer system operated and what its weaknesses were.

Even today, true and committed hackers (we can call them the good hackers) use their skills to find hidden faults in computer systems which if not found could remain secret and one day lead to the downfall of an increasingly computer - dependent civilization. Thus, true hackers help build better computer systems and are more helpful than harmful.

The other hackers can be divided into 5 categories:

Novices: These are entry level crackers (usually aged 12 to 14). They hack for fun and mischief.

Students: They have a passion for computers and programming. They like to find as much information about the system as possible. They generally become system operators.

Tourist: Strong mathematical abilities allow them to crack any system. After cracking if they do not find anything interesting they tend to log off. They sometimes pass the information on how to crack the system to crashers and thieves.

Crashers: They give hackers a bad name. They have no reason for hacking. They become happy and satisfied if they can bring systems to a crashing halt.

Thieves: These people generally look for some profit in cracking a system. They exploit the loopholes in the operating systems of local and remote machines to get credit card numbers in order to cheat people and commit fraud. The more dangerous ones engage in computer espionage and are a threat to the security of military, commercial and personal data. These hackers are the true cyber-criminals.

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