Hacker
A hacker is a person who tinkers around with other people’s
computer systems. This may involve breaking into a server or reverse
engineering software. In most cases, hackers break into systems for fun and not
for commercial reasons. A small number of hackers work for commercial gain.
They take control over other’s systems for the purpose of espionage or to
increase their commercial interests, for example, in order to set up computers
to send out spam.
Hackers are usually highly skilled individuals with deep IT
knowledge. In most cases, they are proficient in several computer languages
such as C++, Perl, Java and more. In fact, most successful hackers are good
computer programmers, because it is essential for a hacker to be able to
automate routine tasks such as cracking a password or testing thousands of
servers for a particular vulnerability.
Then there are script kiddies. These are people with lesser
skills that take advantage of publicly available hacking tools to break into
servers. Script kiddies are disliked in the genuine hacker community because
they cause a lot of problems. While many hackers develop hacking tools for the
challenge, it is usually the script kiddies that cause the damage by using the
tools in unintended ways.
