Hacking itself has been around for decades, but it is only recently, with outbreaks of computer viruses and media attention that the general public has really looked at hacking as a genuine threat to their way of life.

The media would have you believe that hackers are a major threat, but it turns out that most hackers are pretty harmless. But there is another breed of hacker, though, who is very dangerous indeed. It’s important to recognize the difference. Hackers are not crackers, and crackers are not hackers.

The first major computing networks were of course the telephone networks, so it makes sense that they were the first networks to be “hacked.” Hacking telephone networks is called “phreaking,” and it got its start around the late 1960’s and early 1970’s. The first phreaks were college students with access to telephone company manuals that taught them the ins and outs of t

While hackers get into systems to improve their skills and prove to themselves that the y can actually do it, crackers crack for financial gain or because cracking gives them some sort of sick pleasure (Schnell, 2002).

In the nineties, the media begins to simultaneously glorify and indict hackers. Media stories run rampant about the latest virus outbreaks and system vulnerabilities, constantly reminding the public of the danger of hackers, and yet movies like Hackers portray hackers as young, counter-culture heroes fighting against the corruptions of older generations. Whether either of these portrayals is correct is open to interpretation.

The popular interpretation of a hacker is a young, socially deficient male in someone’s basement, probably his parent’s, ferociously tapping at a keyboard and trying to guess a password. While this may be close to the truth in some cases, the best hackers rarely display most of these traits. According to Kevin Mitnick, reformed cracker and hacking expert, the most important skill a hacker can have is people skill. Good hackers are accomplished at social engineering; that is, they’re good at getting people to tell them things they ought not know (Mitnick, 2002).

In the 1990’s, the World Wide Web helped the Internet and hacking explode into the everyday lives of ordinary people. Hacking programs like Back Orifice (which exploits holes in Microsoft Windows software) and L0phtcrack made it easy for even relatively inexperienced computer users to hack with ease (Thomas, 2002).

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