Since the dawn of internet, many terms are used to classify specific types of users or web professionals. One of those terms is quite famous, but also raises many questions: the hacker.
The hack term was coined in the 1950s in order to call intelligent changes in softwares in order to improve them. Thus, the person who performed this type of action ended up being titled hacker.
Even today the term is used for this purpose. The intent of a hacker, after all, will always be to identify and improve points within a system or application. Ideally, a hacker does not cause damage of any kind – on the contrary, he tells the owner that something is wrong, and proposes changes to help the implementation of improvements (upgrades). Many people in the online world have this purpose and end up being hired by large companies to help maintain and prevent possible attacks, which are often caused by so-called crackers.
In order to divide what is really a hacker from who is simply vandalizing the internet or a specific system, the web community created the term cracker in 1985. The term is used to entitle users who have a great knowledge in computing, but who use it for malicious purposes. The breach of security protocols, the spread of private information and even the destruction of important data are some of the practices of a cracker.
In court, the cracker is treated as a criminal and can go to jail for his crimes. Recently, much has been said about web exposure, where crackers disseminate private information in order to ridicule or blackmail the owner of the information because of the content of the collected data.
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