Who am I, and why?
Professional Criminals, or Crackers : These guys make a living breaking into systems and selling the information. They might get hired for corporate or government espionage. They may also have ties to organised criminal groups
I am not in it for the money. I have never cracked anything for BTC (or OMC, or another of those two million internet money things) in my life. In fact, I do not even have a Bitcoin account. I have made no attempt at identity theft. I do not sell my software or coding services. What I do, I do for free.
Old School Hackers : These are your 1960s style computer programmers from Stanford or MIT for whom the term ‘hacking’ is a badge of honour. They’re interested in lines of code and analysing systems, but what they do is not related to criminal activity. They don’t have a malicious intent, though they may have a lack of concern for privacy and proprietary information because they believe the Internet was designed to be an open system.
I am certainly not from Stanford or MIT, and I am about as far from old school as one can get, having been born in 1998. But I am, indeed, very interested in lines of code and analyzing systems. If you tell me one random fact about a computer system, it is quite likely that I will be fascinated and curious and spend the next hour and a half researching what you told me.
Script Kiddies or Cyber-Punks :most commonly what the media call "hackers". These are the kids, like Mafia Boy, who most frequently get caught by authorities because they brag online about their exploits. As an age group, they can be between 12 and 30 years old; they’re predominantly white and male; and on average have a grade 12 education.
Been caught by authorities? No. Between 12 and 30 years old? Yes. Has a grade 12 education? Wish I didn't. White? Yes. Male? No, but do we give a shit? Nope, didn't think so.
Brags online about her exploits? I do not generally have any exploits to brag about, as I do not break into random computer systems for malicious purposes, like some assholes that reside on the Net. Only occasionally will I post it.
There is also the “wannabee†hacker phenomenon: the would-be hackers. Some people now semi- consciously set out to be hackers and borrow hackish prestige by fitting the popular image of hackers. Fortunately, to do this really well, one has to actually become a wizard.
Am I trying to become a hacker to be k00l? I hope not. It is true that some people (not on the internet, that is) do know that I hack. Does this give me some narcissistic joy? Sure, a little. Do I go around telling people what an 3l33t hax0r I am? No, lol. The only reason that anyone knows in the first place is when someone discovered a bunch of exploit scripts on my computer, and then I was fucked. But none of my family particularly give a shit, I don't think.
I don't think I ever set out to be a hacker just because I liked the sound of it. It just kind of happened. I happened to get my own computer for the first time, and a little while after that I learned about programming. And, I was addicted. Long story short, I can't stop. Ever since then I have not stopped coding and hacking once. Something about it draws me, and I still cannot figure out why, no matter hard I try. I mean, I know the euphoria of suddenly, finally, getting a root shell, and that is what I live for. I simply do not know why this thing that we hax0rs call a root shell should make one so happy. There seems to be no answer to the question of Why We Hack......
Coders and Virus Writers : Not a lot of research has been done on these guys. They like to see themselves as an elite. They have a lot of programming background and write code but won’t use it themselves. They have their own networks to experimentwith, which they call "Zoos." They leave it to others to introduce their codes into " The Wild," or the Internet.
I am not a VX, I know barely anything about virus coding. Well, apart from one time a while ago when I was playing around with polymorphic coding and VBS, but then my Winbloze VM crashed, and I have no space on my disk for another one, so that is done now. I have some programming background, but not nearly as much as a truly elite VX. I tend not to be the kind of person who just straight up writes a script from scratch, I only know how to manipulate the code of others to do that which it was not meant to do. Of course, this takes a good amount of programming knowledge itself, which I may or may not have, depending on your opinion. Probably not as much understanding as I really should have to be the best hacker that I can be. I am certain that if I just did something as simple as sitting down and writing a PHP or C script, even a very simple one, I would increase my understanding of the code tenfold. But I never do, I am constantly busy pursuing other paths of knowledge.
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So, who am I? And why?
I do not know, and it irritates me.