bly one of the most famous hackers recently testified before congress. Large corporations have hired hackers as security specialists. Some hackers have even banded together to form security consultant companies.Perhaps you have heard that there is a distinction drawn between the merely curious (the true hacker) and the destructive (the black hats, whacker or cracker). This distinction is a bit self-serving, there is however some truth to it. A pure hacker is only interested in decryption, seeing if they can breach security, or learning all that they can about networks and systems. The just watch, never do any harm to the subject. This definition fits many people, in fact it a pretty good description of anyone who is interested in learning. However, the media and the public ignore this distinction. To be fair, hackers do not always stay pure.So what exactly is the distinction between hackers? There are sub categories within the hacker community, defined by how they apply the hacker ethic. The hackers who seek only to break into systems and see what information is there and do no damage, and whose primary goal is to ensure the freedom of information are called samurai. Whackers are defined as would-be hackers who merely investigate systems, without attempting to create security breaches. Crackers are hackers who for lack of a better word have gone over to the dark side. Crackers are interested in actually stealing information, and doing damage. Crackers are look down on by hackers, because they give hacking a bad name. Though some are clever, most are just persistent and use the code of others to the work for them.Now for the interesting part, just how exactly does a hacker gain access to your system? The first step involves getting a password. One way that this can be accomplished is with a password-harvesting virus. A hacker merely sends the virus onto someones network, which then attaches itself to the networks logon procedure and then...
