Hacker computer security

From ArticleWorld

A Hacker may be defined as a person who explores the details of program systems and how to stretch their capabilities. A hacker is a person who delights in having an intimate understanding of the internal workings of a system, computers and computer networks in particular. They are known to program enthusiastically or obsessively rather than just theorizing about programming. They are generally capable of appreciating hack value and are good at programming quickly. The term evolved in the 1960s through the hacker culture surrounding the MIT AI Lab. Basically they are people who writes programs in assembly language or in system-level languages like C. During the 1990s, the term "hacker" became associated with "cracker,” who is a person who performs some form of computer sabotage. It is said that to be an effective cracker, one had to be a good hacker, thus the terms got intertwined, and hacker was adopted by the popular press. The term gained wide acceptance in early 2000, in connection to a huge denial of service (DOS) attack on Yahoo!, eBay, Amazon.com and other Web sites. Hacker refers to a type of computer hacker who exploits systems and gain unauthorized access. Most commonly, there are different types of hackers. They are called black-hat hackers and ethical or white hat hackers, and grey hats. A White hat hacker is one who breaks security but who does so for altruistic reasons. They often attempt to work with a manufacturer to remove discovered security weaknesses. A Black Hat is someone who subverts computer security without authorization for terrorism, credit card fraud, identity theft, intellectual property theft, and many other crime like taking control of a remote computer through a network, or software cracking. A software cracker is a person specialized in working around copy protection mechanisms in software. Grey hat hacker has ambiguous ethics and/or borderline legality. A Hacktivist is a hacker who utilizes technology to announce a political message though Web vandalism is not necessarily hacktivism. Hackers use several recurring tools of the trade used by computer criminals like a Trojan horse which are programs designed so that they seem to do or be one thing, such as a legitimate software, but actually are or do another.They can be used to set up a back door in a computer system so that the intruder can return later and gain access. Some of the most famous hackers include Jonathan James, Mark Abene, Dark Avenger, and John Draper.