this post was submitted on 20 Jun 2023
32 points (100.0% liked)
World News
22058 readers
52 users here now
Breaking news from around the world.
News that is American but has an international facet may also be posted here.
Guidelines for submissions:
- Where possible, post the original source of information.
- If there is a paywall, you can use alternative sources or provide an archive.today, 12ft.io, etc. link in the body.
- Do not editorialize titles. Preserve the original title when possible; edits for clarity are fine.
- Do not post ragebait or shock stories. These will be removed.
- Do not post tabloid or blogspam stories. These will be removed.
- Social media should be a source of last resort.
These guidelines will be enforced on a know-it-when-I-see-it basis.
For US News, see the US News community.
This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
My brain has been completely fried by the American racialization of people because my first reaction to reading that title was "well, calling them a racial slur is not very nice"
OP is aware that the term hackers had, and still has, a completely different meaning in the community it originated from. A real hacker is someone with the skill to modify a codebase to suit their needs. The corruption of the term by corporate media is an attempt to steal the fundamental human right to share one's digital work freely by labeling these people and their work as criminal. Hacking means modifying source code to suit your specific needs. It could be used to refer to the efforts of someone learning to become a kernel developer or it could be someone modifying the software source code in ways that are not suitable to share with others, such as features that may be incompatible with some systems or features.
Cracking has long been proposed by hackers as a more appropriate term describing a bad actor attempting to gain unauthorized access to a system.
It seems pedantic at first and in my simple explanation here too, but if you look into the details, philosophy, politics, and people where this term originated from, then look at the opposition and how they profited, and finally look at the state of current society and the internet, you will likely see this as, at least mildly, offensive. Like, I still misuse the term as if it has dual meanings, but anyone using it correctly gets my attention right away.
Safecracker is an example of the correct term being in use and somehow people don't have s problem with that.
Great explanation, thanks
As someone who works in cybersecurity, I do not know anyone who uses the term cracker. Everyone I know refers to themselves and other people in the industry as hackers.
Huh, fascinating writeup. I'm gonna use crackers like this from now on.
I couldn't figure out which brand of crackers was so invested in Reddit to demand ransom lol. Ritz means business apparently.