Stop Calling Everything A "Hack"

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This annoys me to no end. I post links to stories all the damn time that refer to everything as a "hack" or call a 12 year old that used social engineering to gain access to someone's Facebook account a "hacker."

When you call a leak a "hack," you're calling the person who found the vulnerability a "hacker." That immediately tarnishes what is usually an act of good intention -- reporting a bug either to the affected party or the media -- with that of an illegal act. But better a good guy finding the flaw than a bad guy. And this kind of response by Nevada state is just one incident in a list of many that pose a larger question for security researchers.
 
THAT POST IS A HACK, MAN, YOU HACK, YOU.

For those not in the know, the original usage of "hacker" means hobbyist and that's it. Someone that works on anything as a hobby or just for fun is a hacker, basically, but thanks to the media and stupid fucking people everywhere the term "hacker" and "hack" now automagically end up creating a mental image of some hoodie wearing unkempt youth sitting in a dark corner of a basement someplace staring at a glowing screen (black, of course, with bright green text, or some other GUI of a similar nature) cranking out malicious code as fast as he/she can type it out.

So, in that sense my statement above is somewhat true as Steve is a news posting hacker extraordinaire. :p
 
Man Hacks? HL was doing it before it was cool.....

latest
 
To the linguistically challenged of the world:

To the Internet media- not everything needs to be described as "hacked". Try using a dictionary of synonyms.
To the Valley Girl wannabes and hipsters of the world- try NOT using the word "like" in every sentence you speak, you dimwits. Try using a dictionary of synonyms.
To football narrators: Every other play doesn't need to be described with the words "physicality" or "trickeration" you idiots. Again, use a dictionary of synonyms.
And finally, to the Media of the world- Try NOT sensationalizing every little thing that passes across your desk. I swear, a dog dropping a deuce these days turns into a topic of the year.

Happy New Year to all
 
This annoys me to no end. I post links to stories all the damn time that refer to everything as a "hack" or call a 12 year old that used social engineering to gain access to someone's Facebook account a "hacker."

Kevin Mitnick was indisputably a hacker, yet most of his hacks were done through social engineering (he called it "hacking the wetware").
 
To the linguistically challenged of the world:

To the Internet media- not everything needs to be described as "hacked". Try using a dictionary of synonyms.
To the Valley Girl wannabes and hipsters of the world- try NOT using the word "like" in every sentence you speak, you dimwits. Try using a dictionary of synonyms.
To football narrators: Every other play doesn't need to be described with the words "physicality" or "trickeration" you idiots. Again, use a dictionary of synonyms.
And finally, to the Media of the world- Try NOT sensationalizing every little thing that passes across your desk. I swear, a dog dropping a deuce these days turns into a topic of the year.

Happy New Year to all

Is dictionary of synonyms a synonym for thesaurus?
 
technically hacking included walking up the data base of site improperly secured by earsing the to the first slash that gave you a directory listing. so that is hacking. preking how ever it is spelled is changing the site. Both are illegal but if nothing is changed no one notices.
 
Also, "news" channels need to stop using "Breaking News!" when the news is hours old.
 
Also, "news" channels need to stop using "Breaking News!" when the news is hours old.

If only after the average person being is intelligent enough to figure out how to stop themselves from being mislead for the 1000th time, then maybe all the clickbaiting will stop.
 
Unfortunately, this world is fanatical about "reality" TV. And that's what the majority wants: Drama, 24/7.

Regardless of your political leanings, you should be scared to death about Trump. If you aren't:


You will be.
 
Country went to shit when 9/11 happened. Now law enforcement jumps on anything.
 
Bugs the heck out of me as well, I too think of Kevin Mitnick when I think of hacking. Using social eng to gain creds and them finding holes in the code to move deeper and deeper. Ze Russians Tommy, using a freaking pr0n email to podesta with a link to malware any joe shmo can get a hold of to download his emails from gmail is NOT HACKING. That, is just blatant stupidity, and they deserve it.
 
Kinda, it was a payment of sorts but then again I had to do all the work again.

Just lay there like a dead fish until they show signs of effort.


And with regards to the article. There's a reason that the term Hacker has three additional names - Whitehat, Grayhat, and Blackhat. So maybe it's not so much an issue of using the term Hacker, but rather an issue of not including the additional information? I've read many vulnerability notice articles that properly use the additional terms when using the word hacker. E.g. "A whitehat hacker by the name of GarfunkedSimon found the vulnerability ...".
 
The OP is a hack for writing this thread.

See hack: a writer or journalist producing dull, unoriginal work OR a person who does dull routine work. :p

Edit: Damn it, now I have been made a hack for replying to this post. Hell, the lot of you are all hacks.
 
technically hacking included walking up the data base of site improperly secured by earsing the to the first slash that gave you a directory listing. so that is hacking. preking how ever it is spelled is changing the site. Both are illegal but if nothing is changed no one notices.
I thought phreaking was telephone hacking?

I always liked the Neal Stephenson definition of hacking (probably badly paraphrased): somebody that makes something do what it wasn't designed to do.
 
it is like coding and programming. You program a machine you write code. A programmer or a coder is essentially the same thing but a coder designs code and programmer follows a check list. hacking is when you attempt to reverse engineer code and phreaking is when you do so to gain something material that you did not want to pay for. social engineering (goods or services / grifting and greifing), the tones on the old pay phones (free phone calls), changing a websites front page (notoriety), going through dumpsters for passwords written down or usually for usernames and employee names to roll the employees for current passwords usually with a pretty face and alcohol. Basically it is when you use technology to steal from people or to slander them. and I have no idea how to spell grifting I think I spelled it right but legally it is just called fraud but most people expect a different word.
 
I changed the code on my garage opener. Now I kick back, drink a beer, then watch to see which neighbors come out to shut theirs. . . .
 
To the Valley Girl wannabes and hipsters of the world- try NOT using the word "like" in every sentence you speak, you dimwits.
It's been replaced, and it seems every airheaded millennial is doing it.
'And.......yeah'. Or 'But........yeah'. Tacked onto the end of sentences when they run out of things to say. Youtube videos are loaded with them, and I hear it every day at work at least 50 times. When I bring it up, they have no idea they're doing it, until the next time it comes out of their mouth, then right after it I hear 'oh shit!'.
 
It's been replaced, and it seems every airheaded millennial is doing it.
It is preferable when people take the time to properly formulate their sentences, but ragging on the new generation is getting old (fogey).
Our sires' age was worse than our grandsires'. We, their sons, are more
worthless than they; so in our turn we shall give the world a progeny yet more
corrupt.

I am still trying to decide if "....yeah" is better then "um...." (though the combination of the two is quite horrid).
 
This annoys me to no end. I post links to stories all the damn time that refer to everything as a "hack" or call a 12 year old that used social engineering to gain access to someone's Facebook account a "hacker."


When you call a leak a "hack," you're calling the person who found the vulnerability a "hacker." That immediately tarnishes what is usually an act of good intention -- reporting a bug either to the affected party or the media -- with that of an illegal act. But better a good guy finding the flaw than a bad guy. And this kind of response by Nevada state is just one incident in a list of many that pose a larger question for security researchers.




Hacking is a technical term , but what people do not know is that there are many different forms of hacking techniques available to the intruder to accomplish his or her goals. Social engineering is one of them. If the perpetrator bypasses the information security of a system whether it is social engineering or picking up a piece of paper with a password he then he has succeeded as a hacker by gaining accessing to secure information.

also i would like to add to this thread since no one mentioned these terms what describes certain hackers based on their goals.



Hackers aren’t inherently bad — the word “hacker” doesn’t mean “criminal” or “bad guy.” Geeks and tech writers often refer to “black hat,” “white hat,” and “gray hat” hackers. These terms define different groups of hackers based on their behavior.

The definition of the word “hacker” is controversial, and could mean either someone who compromises computer security or a skilled developer in the free software or open-source movements.


Black Hats
Black-hat hackers, or simply “black hats,” are the type of hacker the popular media seems to focus on. Black-hat hackers violate computer security for personal gain (such as stealing credit card numbers or harvesting personal data for sale to identity thieves) or for pure maliciousness (such as creating a botnet and using that botnet to perform DDOS attacks against websites they don’t like.)

Black hats fit the widely-held stereotype that hackers are criminals performing illegal activities for personal gain and attacking others. They’re the computer criminals.

A black-hat hacker who finds a new, “zero-day” security vulnerability would sell it to criminal organizations on the black market or use it to compromise computer systems.

Media portrayals of black-hat hackers may be accompanied by silly stock photos like the below one, which is intended as a parody.

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White Hats
White-hat hackers are the opposite of the black-hat hackers. They’re the “ethical hackers,” experts in compromising computer security systems who use their abilities for good, ethical, and legal purposes rather than bad, unethical, and criminal purposes.

For example, many white-hat hackers are employed to test an organizations’ computer security systems. The organization authorizes the white-hat hacker to attempt to compromise their systems. The white-hat hacker uses their knowledge of computer security systems to compromise the organization’s systems, just as a black hat hacker would. However, instead of using their access to steal from the organization or vandalize its systems, the white-hat hacker reports back to the organization and informs them of how they gained access, allowing the organization to improve their defenses. This is known as “penetration testing,” and it’s one example of an activity performed by white-hat hackers.

A white-hat hacker who finds a security vulnerability would disclose it to the developer, allowing them to patch their product and improve its security before it’s compromised. Various organizations pay “bounties” or award prizes for revealing such discovered vulnerabilities, compensating white-hats for their work.

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Gray Hats
Very few things in life are clear black-and-white categories. In reality, there’s often a gray area. A gray-hat hacker falls somewhere between a black hat and a white hat. A gray hat doesn’t work for their own personal gain or to cause carnage, but they may technically commit crimes and do arguably unethical things.

For example, a black hat hacker would compromise a computer system without permission, stealing the data inside for their own personal gain or vandalizing the system. A white-hat hacker would ask for permission before testing the system’s security and alert the organization after compromising it. A gray-hat hacker might attempt to compromise a computer system without permission, informing the organization after the fact and allowing them to fix the problem. While the gray-hat hacker didn’t use their access for bad purposes, they compromised a security system without permission, which is illegal.

If a gray-hat hacker discovers a security flaw in a piece of software or on a website, they may disclose the flaw publically instead of privately disclosing the flaw to the organization and giving them time to fix it. They wouldn’t take advantage of the flaw for their own personal gain — that would be black-hat behavior — but the public disclosure could cause carnage as black-hat hackers tried to take advantage of the flaw before it was fixed.
 
What is he holding in his hand?

lts a made up picture showing what would be a thief since thieves wear masks, while holding a computer in one hand and in the other a hammer. Probably with the intention of breaking the computer to obtain the hard drive with the sensitive information. No one knows for sure..

This photo used in the ad is "laymens term" photograph for stupid iddiots who know nothing about what a hacker might look like . A bad mean person who wants your computer data
 
It's really annoying watching youtube and seeing these videos called "Life hacks" that are not in any shape or form related to what that word means.
 
It's really annoying watching youtube and seeing these videos called "Life hacks" that are not in any shape or form related to what that word means.

I would agree


Life hack (or life hacking) refers to any trick, shortcut, skill, or novelty method that increases productivity and efficiency, in all walks of life.


Its not even in the dictionary and is a term that is being widely used as a means to get around something . In this case life hacks has nothing to do with programming malicious code to get around something.
 
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