[lug] I'm amazed

[Scott Mann]

I think the first time I saw this referenced was in the "Cuckoo's Egg" by Cliff Stoll (a great read, by the way). But I could be misremembering and it could have been somewhere else. In any event, it was in the late 80's/early 90's.

The issue, it seemed, was that there were people who proudly referred to themselves as "hacker". Kernel hackers, in particular, seemed really upset by the use of hacker in a negative way. At that time, there was a push to use the term "cracker" for those malevolent individuals, but it seems not to have caught on. Or at least it seems that "hacker" is still frequently used in reference to someone who perpetrates some sort of cyber crime, online definitions not withstanding.

As an aside, if you like reading stories about this stuff, here are a few titles, in addition to Stoll's work, which you might find interesting (albeit somewhat dated).

Underground Tales of Hacking, Madness, and Obsession on the Electronic Frontier by Suelette Dreyfus

The Watchman by Jonathan Littman

Takedown by Tsutomu Shimomura (the capture of Kevin Mitnick)

-Scott