Illegal access
The term “hack” was first used by US university computing centre in mid-1960. The offence of illegally accessing the system. There are two terms for illegal attempt to get into the system hacking and cracking. Hackers are people who get into the system and exploit the system for purpose. Breaking the password, setting up the faulty hardware and software to know the password, spoofing website to disclose password or by using key loggers. Hackers are not limited in getting the passwords to the systems hackers are more beyond that. Hacker in a classic term is someone who things out of the box and wants to know what will happened if set of rules are not followed whereas a cracker is someone who breaks into the system with the intention of exploiting the cracked/vulnerable information or data so found. Crackers and hackers are used interchangeably however a hacker could be only someone who want to find the possible vulnerabilities legally and a cracker will exploit those vulnerabilities for some interest.
What motivate them?
Self-interest, an individual may have outmost interest in knowing how things work. To prove their abilities or to understand their abilities. Money, where and individual gets into hacking and cracking to make money. Personal reason, sometimes revenge and hate drives individual into such stuff, out of excitement in doing something different.
How?
As discussed earlier the primary process of getting into system is to steal the password or to break the password. Other than that, malwares are also used to get into the system. Trojan horse, it provides unauthorized access to the system. Denial of service, give access to the hacker to bring down the network without internal access. Exploiting defaults, nothing is simpler than attacking a device or system when uses the default settings. Scanning and research, clear fully scanning and researching vulnerabilities of system and websites. Monitoring, monitoring the target, attacks, reading blogs and discovering vulnerabilities which are still to be patched.
Types of hacking and cracking
Good guy, bad guy and a mix of two. Hackers can be categorized into three categorized into white hat, black hat and grey hat. White hat, hackers who use their skill for security purposes who find the vulnerabilities in the system legally and fix it. They are hired for this purpose. Black hat, hackers who use their skills for offensive purposes who typically find the vulnerabilities in order to exploit those vulnerabilities. Grey hat, who works both way depending upon the situation.
Hacking and cracking both are important and plays important role in today’s world if done wisely otherwise it would lead to legal consequences.
