What we will look at today…

At the beginning there were ………..hackers!

Definition of a hacker can vary from “someone who hacks….” To “Some one who is interested in knowing the technology by experimenting….” Clearly the meaning of the term had changed radically during the last few decades. Believe it or not at the beginning society had a positive attitude toward the hacker. Then he was considered to be a Pearson who is interesting in knowing the ins and outs of the technology. here is an example.

In 1971 when I joined the staff of the MIT Artificial Intelligence lab, all of us who helped develop the operating system software, we called ourselves hackers. We were not breaking any laws, at least not in doing the hacking we were paid to do. We were developing software and we were having fun. Hacking refers to the spirit of fun in which we were developing software. The hacker ethic refers to the feelings of right and wrong, to the ethical ideas this community of people had — that knowledge should be shared with other people who can benefit from it, and that important resources should be utilized rather than wasted.- David Bennahum, “An Interview with Richard Stallman,” Meme 2, no. 4, 1996,

For those who don’t know Richard Stallmanis the founder of the Free Software Foundation.

Black, White and Gray

As described earlier as the time pass by the meaning of the hacker had changed from positive to negative, Now a days hackers are considered to be ‘no good cyber criminals’  IN order to make the difference between these old definition and new definition new terms have emerged.

Black Hat hacker:

This is some one who uses his knowledge in hacking illegally, to do harm for the .society.

White Hat hacker: This is someone who uses his skill to test the security of a system. He always performs these testing under the supervision of the legitimate users and doesn’t use his knowledge illegally.

Gray Hat Hacker:

As you may already guess this is the point between two extremes.