Hacker (computer security)

In common usage, hacker is generic term for a computer criminal, often with a specific specialty in computer intrusion. While other definitions peculiar to the computer enthusiast community exist, they are rarely used in mainstream context. Computer hacking subculture is often referred to as the network hacker subculture or simply the computer underground. According to its adherents, cultural values center around the idea of creative and extraordinary computer usage. Proponents claim to be motivated by artistic and political ends, but are often unconcerned about the use of criminal means to achieve them.

Paul A Taylor defines a hack as being simple but impressive; involving sophisticated technical knowledge; and having the illicitness of being against the rules.

History

Artifacts and customs

Hacker subculture is heavily dependent on technology. It has produced its own slang and various forms of unusual alphabet use, for example l33tspeak. Such things are usually seen as an especially silly aspect by the academic hacker subculture. In part due to this, the slangs of the two subcultures differ substantially. Political attitude usually includes views for freedom of information, freedom of speech, a right for anonymity and most have a strong opposition against copyright. Writing programs and performing other activities to support these views is referred to as hacktivism by the subculture. Some go as far as seeing illegal cracking ethically justified for this goal; the most common form is website defacement.

Hacker culture is frequently compared to the Wild West: a male-dominated Frontier to conquer.

Hacker groups

The network hacking subculture is supported by regular real-world gatherings called hacker conventions or "hacker cons". These have drawn more people every year including SummerCon (Summer), DEF CON, HoHoCon (Christmas), PumpCon (Halloween), H.O.P.E. (Hackers on Planet Earth) and HEU (Hacking at the End of the Universe). They have helped expand the definition and solidify the importance of the network hacker subculture.

Hacking and the media

Hacker magazines

The security hackers have also edited some magazines, most notably:

• Phrack
• 2600: The Hacker Quarterly
• Hakin9

While the information contained in hacker magazines and ezines was often outdated, they improved the reputations of those who contributed by documenting their successes.

Hackers in fiction

Hackers from the network hacking subculture often show an interest in fictional cyberpunk and cyberculture literature and movies. Absorption of fictional pseudonyms, symbols, values, and metaphors from these fictional works is very common.

Books portraying hackers:

• The cyberpunk novels of William Gibson novels — especially the Sprawl Trilogy — are very popular with hackers.
• Hackers (short stories)
• Snow Crash
• Helba from the dot .hack manga and anime series.

Films also portray hackers:

• WarGames
• The Matrix series
• Hackers
• Die Hard 4.0
• Swordfish
• The Net
• The Net 2.0
• Antitrust
• Enemy of the State
• Sneakers
• Untraceable

Non-fiction books

• The Hacker Crackdown
• Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution

Hacker attitudes

The term "hacker" has a number of different meanings. Several subgroups with different attitudes and aims use different terms to demarcate themselves from each other, or try to exclude some specific group with which they do not agree. In a computer security context, it is often synonymous with a computer intruder.

Paul A. Taylor quotes Steven Levy when describing the hacker ethic as:

1. All information should be free;
2. Mistrust authority--promote decentralization;
3. Hackers should be judged by their hacking, not bogus criteria such as degrees, age, race, or position;
4. You can create art and beauty on a computer; and
5. Computers can change your life for the better.

It is common among hackers to use aliases for the purpose of concealing identity, rather than revealing their real names. Members of the network hacking scene are often being stereotypically described as crackers by the academic hacker subculture, yet see themselves as hackers and even try to include academic hackers in what they see as one wider hacker culture, a view harshly rejected by the academic hacker subculture itself. Instead of a hacker – cracker dichotomy, they give more emphasis to a spectrum of different categories, such as white hat (“ethical hacking”), grey hat, black hat and script kiddie. In contrast to the academic hackers, they usually reserve the term cracker to refer to black hat hackers, or more generally hackers with unlawful intentions.

White hat

A white hat hacker breaks security for non-malicious reasons.

Grey hat

A grey hat hacker is a hacker of ambiguous ethics and/or borderline legality, often frankly admitted.

Black Hat

A black hat hacker is someone who subverts computer security without authorization or who uses technology (usually a computer or the Internet) for terrorism, vandalism (malicious destruction), credit card fraud, identity theft, intellectual property theft, or many other types of crime. This can mean taking control of a remote computer through a network, or software cracking.

Cyberterrorist

A Cyberterrorist uses technology to commit terrorism. Their intentions are to cause harm to social, ideological, religious, political, or governmental establishments. Will be considered as a hacktivist by some.

Script kiddie

A script kiddie a non-expert who breaks into computer systems by using pre-packaged automated tools written by others.

Hacktivist

A hacktivist is a hacker who utilizes technology to announce a political message. Will be considered a cyberterrorist by some.

Common methods

A typical approach in an attack an Internet-connected system is:

1. Network enumeration: Discovering information about the intented target.
2. Vulnerability analysis: Identifying potential ways of attack.
3. Exploitation: Attempting to compromise the system by employing the vulnerabilities found trough the vulnerability analysis.

In order to do so, there are several recurring tools of the trade and techniques used by computer criminals and security experts.

Security exploit

A security exploit is a prepared application that takes advantage of a known weakness.

Vulnerability scanner

A vulnerability scanner is a tool used to quickly check computers on a network for known weaknesses. Hackers also commonly use port scanners. These check to see which ports on a specified computer are "open" or available to access the computer, and sometimes will detect what program or service is listening on that port, and its version number. (Note that firewalls defend computers from intruders by limiting access to ports/machines both inbound and outbound, but can still be circumvented.)

Packet Sniffer

A packet sniffer is an application that captures data packets, which can be used to capture passwords and other data in transit over the network.

Spoofing attack

A spoofing attack involves one program, system, or website successfully masquerading as another by falsifying data and thereby being treated as a trusted system by a user or another program.

Rootkit

A rootkit is designed to conceal the compromise of a computer's security, and can represent any of a set of programs which work to subvert control of an operating system from its legitimate operators. Usually, a rootkit will obscure its installation and attempt to prevent its removal through a subversion of standard system security. Rootkits may include replacements for system binaries so that it becomes impossible for the legitimate user to detect the presence of the intruder on the system by looking at process tables.

Social engineering

Social Engineering is the art of getting persons to reveal sensitive information about a system. This is usually done by impersonating someone or by convincing people to believe you have permissions to obtain such information.

Trojan horse

A Trojan horse is a program which seems to be doing one thing, but is actually doing another. A trojan horse can be used to set up a back door in a computer system such that the intruder can gain access later. (The name refers to the horse from the Trojan War, with conceptually similar function of deceiving defenders into bringing an intruder inside.)

Virus

A virus is a self-replicating program that spreads by inserting copies of itself into other executable code or documents. Thus, a computer virus behaves in a way similar to a biological virus, which spreads by inserting itself into living cells.

Worm

Like a virus, a worm is also a self-replicating program. A worm differs from a virus in that it propagates through computer networks without user intervention. Many people conflate the terms "virus" and "worm", using them both to describe any self-propagating program.

Key loggers

A keylogger is a tool designed to record ('log') every keystroke on an affected machine for later retrieval. Often uses virus-, trojan-, and rootkit-like methods to remain active and hidden.

Notable intruders and criminal hackers

Notable Security Hackers

Eric Corley

Eric Corley (also known as Emmanuel Goldstein) is the long standing publisher of 2600: The Hacker Quarterly and founder of the H.O.P.E. conferences. He has been part of the hacker community since the late '70s.

Fyodor

Gordon Lyon (better known as Fyodor) authored the Nmap Security Scanner as well as many network security books and web sites. He is a founding member of the Honeynet Project and Vice President of Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility.

Johan Helsingius

Johan "Julf" Helsingius operated the world's most popular anonymous remailer, the Penet remailer (called penet.fi), until he closed up shop in September 1996.

Tsutomu Shimomura

Shimomura helped catch Kevin Mitnick, the United States' most infamous computer intruder, in early 1994. He is the co-author of a book about the Mitnick case, Takedown: The Pursuit and Capture of Kevin Mitnick, America's Most Wanted Computer Outlaw-By the Man Who Did It (ISBN 0-7868-8913-6), though Mitnick himself has raised questions about the book's accuracy.

Solar Designer

Solar Designer is the pseudonym of the founder of the Openwall Project.

Michał Zalewski

Michał Zalweski (lcamtuf) is a prominent security researcher.

References

Taylor, 1999 :Taylor, Paul A. (1999). Hackers. Routledge.

Related literature

• Clifford Stoll (1990). The Cuckoo's Egg. The Bodley Head Ltd. ISBN 0-370-31433-6.
• Code Hacking: A Developer's Guide to Network Security by Richard Conway, Julian Cordingley
• Kevin Beaver Hacking For Dummies.
• Katie Hafner & John Markoff (1991). Cyberpunk: Outlaws and Hackers on the Computer Frontier. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0-671-68322-5.
• David H. Freeman & Charles C. Mann (1997). @ Large: The Strange Case of the World's Biggest Internet Invasion. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0-684-82464-7.
• Suelette Dreyfus (1997). Underground: Tales of Hacking, Madness and Obsession on the Electronic Frontier. Mandarin. ISBN 1-86330-595-5.
• Bill Apro & Graeme Hammond (2005). Hackers: The Hunt for Australia's Most Infamous Computer Cracker. Five Mile Press. ISBN 1-74124-722-5.
• Stuart McClure, Joel Scambray & George Kurtz (1999). Hacking Exposed. Mcgraw-Hill. ISBN 0-07-212127-0.

See also

• Wireless hacking

External links