What / Who , is a hacker ?!?!?!?

[B coder]

Hackers come in many disguises, and can do harm in may ways. They may be driven by simple misguided mischief or have more intentional and malicious objectives.

Attacks from the Inside
Hackers are thought to be external threats. However, disgruntled employees are as often the culprits. Common hacking techniques are planting viruses in networks, using back-doors to enter systems, and encoding 'worm' software.


Viruses and Worms
By the end of 2000, the computer virus was widely viewed as the leading security threat confronting organizations by entering the network via e-mail. A virus is a software program that misguides a computer system. A virus abuses the system's resources to damage the system. To have an accurate concept of a computer virus, consider a biological virus. Biological viruses are tiny scraps of genetic code, RNA or DNA. They can take over the control of the mechanism of a living cell. They then trick it into making thousands of flawless replicas of itself in a very short time. A 'worm' is a program or algorithm that replicates itself over a computer network and usually performs malicious actions, such as using up the computer's resources and possibly shutting the system down.


Firewall Port Attacks
It is an amazing thing to watch a firewall under attack by an outside hacker. Ports are methodically tested and, retested as the intruder probes for weaknesses. Unfortunately, due to incorrect setup or software bugs, weaknesses are often available to be exploited. Firewalls protect internal networks from the Web. They are a mainstay of current network security, and increasingly feature additional. Functionality including proxy services, Virtual Private Network endpoints, and even load balancing. Some of these hybrids are weaker than others due to poor integration.

Break-Ins
Hackers are often intrigued by the challenge of simply breaking into a server. Sometimes, they loot files - but that can be detected readily. Ideally, they want to create a back door, undetected, that will enable them to leave behind a program to sniff out and collect passwords ("root" is preferred) for later collection, or permit them to revisit the server so they can use it to launch an attack on another server.

[Kingroudy]

and guess who is not a hacker:
you are not a hacker, if you download a trojan horse, and you screw up your friend's hard drive, no you are not, but this is a step toward hacking.

[god]

not all hackers do mischief, the first paragraph is totally retarded !
anyway nothing more than what i expect from a copied article (http://www.softrim.com/Hackers.asp)
anyway softrim sucks... too many defacements in the past ! TOO many !

[madmike]

Guys if u need what is a real hacker check this link :
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html
and don try to use a program which thousands used it before u and tell me "i'm a hacker"

[god]

the second link is greatly better than the first copy pasted article.... anyway closing thread, reason: meh