Hacking Articles, Tips and Tools

Data breaches are occurring left and right, with media coverage putting them in the public eye and bringing on a culture of fear tied to cybersecurity and malicious attackers. But who are these malicious attackers? Are they truly hackers, to use the term everyone uses to describe groups and individuals behind high-profile attacks on organizations and governments?

The term “hacker” is used by the media in a derogatory sense, to describe cybercriminals, those who pose a threat to our private information. But is that accurate? The term has had its fair share of meanings throughout the years. Put simply, a hacker is someone who possesses great wealth of knowledge on programming, various computer languages, code and general computer security, and uses their skills to find vulnerabilities in computer systems with the goal of improving and patching those vulnerabilities.

It’s normal to find hackers hired by different organizations to audit their networks, perform penetration testing and conduct all kinds of cybersecurity investigations to uncover any flaws in the system.

What the media calls a hacker is usually a “cracker” — someone who uses their knowledge with malicious intent to find flaws in systems, not with the goal of improving them, but to exploit them and gain unauthorized access.

We want to reclaim this term from the media. We want to show how hackers, as security professionals, are the unsung heroes who work hard to keep everyone safe and protected against cyber criminals. In our category “Hacking”, you can read about the history of hacking”, how hacker culture came to be, our ode to white hat hackers, the differences between hackers and crackers, and of course our technical posts detailing cybercrime investigations and the best hacker tools used by security professionals, to name just a few key subjects.

Hacker vs Cracker: Main Differences Explained
SecurityTrails Blog · Jul 11 2019 · by Sara Jelen

Hacker vs Cracker: Main Differences Explained

Media coverage of data breaches is increasing rapidly, especially with the public's watchful eye on organizations and the vulnerable systems they work with — easy targets for exploitation. However, the less-than-dramatic truth is that the frequency and scale of data breaches hasn't really soared* in the past decade, even if people are still at great risk of having their data exposed. The media itself has brought on the hype and created a fear culture around data breaches and malicious attackers.