It also has a hacker ethic, based on the idea that writing software and sharing the result on a voluntary basis is a good idea, and that information should be free, but that it's not up to the hacker to make it free by breaking into private computer systems.

This hacker ethic was publicized and perhaps originated in Steven Levy's Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution ( 1984 ).

Hacker ethic is a term for the moral values and philosophy that are standard in the hacker community.

The term hacker ethic is attributed to journalist Steven Levy as described in his 1984 book titled Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution.

While some tenets of hacker ethic were described in other texts like Computer Lib / Dream Machines ( 1974 ) by Theodor Nelson, Levy appears to have been the first to document both the philosophy and the founders of the philosophy.

However, Levy's hacker ethic also has often been quoted out of context and misunderstood to refer to hacking as in breaking into computers, and so many sources incorrectly imply that it is describing the ideals of white-hat hackers.

The hacker ethic was described as a " new way of life, with a philosophy, an ethic and a dream ".

However, the elements of the hacker ethic were not openly debated and discussed, rather they were accepted and silently agreed upon.

The free software movement was born in the early 80s from followers of the hacker ethic.

As Levy summarized in the preface of Hackers, the general tenets or principles of hacker ethic include:

; Hackers should be judged by their hacking, not criteria such as degrees, age, race, sex, or position: Inherent in the hacker ethic is a meritocratic system where superficiality is disregarded in esteem of skill.

In an example of the hacker ethic of equal opportunity, L. Peter Deutsch, a twelve-year-old hacker, was accepted in the TX-0 community, though he was not recognized by non-hacker graduate students.

They believed that everyone in society could benefit from experiencing such power and that if everyone could interact with computers in the way that hackers did, then the hacker ethic might spread through society and computers would improve the world.

Many of the principles and tenets of hacker ethic contribute to a common goal: the Hands-On Imperative.

Levy identifies several " true hackers " who significantly influenced the hacker ethic.

All three generations of hackers, according to Levy, embodied the principles of the hacker ethic.

Levy's " third generation " practitioners of hacker ethic include:

In 2001, Finnish philosopher Pekka Himanen promoted the hacker ethic in opposition to the Protestant work ethic.

In Himanen's opinion, the hacker ethic is more closely related to the virtue ethics found in the writings of Plato and of Aristotle.

In this manifesto, the authors wrote about a hacker ethic centering around passion, hard work, creativity and joy in creating software.

* Gabriella Coleman, an anthropologist at McGill University, studies hacker cultures and has written extensively on the hacker ethic and culture

On July 12, 1985, in conjunction with a credit card fraud investigation, the Middlesex County, NJ Sheriff's department raided and seized The Private Sector BBS, which was the official BBS for grey hat hacker quarterly 2600 Magazine at the time.

The crew is made up of four unique characters: Jet Black, a former ISSP police officer who retired following a mob hit that cost him his arm, Spike Spiegel, a laid-back exiled hitman of the ruthless Red Dragons ' Syndicate, Faye Valentine, a beautiful amnesiac con artist who awakened into the future world after a lengthy period of cryogenic hibernation, and Radical Edward, a hyperactive and barefooted preteen girl with a reputation as a prolific computer hacker.

In 1983, Richard Stallman, longtime member of the hacker community at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, announced the GNU project, saying that he had become frustrated with the effects of the change in culture of the computer industry and its users.

This includes what hacker slang calls “ script kiddies ,” people breaking into computers using programs written by others, with very little knowledge about the way they work.

In the programmer subculture of hackers, a computer hacker is a person who enjoys designing software and building programs with a sense for aesthetics and playful cleverness.

In other words to " hack " at an original creation, as if with an axe, is to force-fit it into being usable for a task not intended by the original creator, and a " hacker " would be someone who does this habitually.

The adjective associated with hacker is " hackish " ( see the Jargon file ).

One specific example are clever pranks traditionally perpetrated by MIT students, with the perpetrator being called hacker.

An article from MIT's student paper The Tech used the term hacker in this context already in 1963 in its pejorative meaning for someone messing with the phone system.

An encounter of the programmer and the computer security hacker subculture occurred at the end of the 1980s, when a group of computer security hackers, sympathizing with the Chaos Computer Club ( who disclaimed any knowledge in these activities ), broke into computers of American military organizations and academic institutions.

* Interview with Steven Levy: About the different hacker subcultures and their relations.

* Steve Dompier: Homebrew Computer Club member and hacker who worked with the early Altair 8800

Although born from the same history of Unix, Internet free software, and the hacker culture as the free software movement launched by Richard Stallman and his Free Software Foundation, the Open Source Initiative was formed and chose the term open source, in Michael Tiemann's words, to " dump the moralizing and confrontational attitude that had been associated with ' free software ' in the past and sell the idea strictly on the same pragmatic, business-case grounds that had motivated Netscape.

The hacker then leaked the full list of the 32 million passwords ( with no other identifiable information ) to the internet.

A Trojan horse, or Trojan, is a type of malware that masquerades as a legitimate file or helpful program possibly with the purpose of granting a hacker unauthorized access to a computer.

Trojan horses in this way may require interaction with a hacker to fulfill their purpose, though the hacker does not have to be the individual responsible for distributing the Trojan horse.

It is possible for individual hackers to scan computers on a network using a port scanner in the hope of finding one with a malicious Trojan horse installed, which the hacker can then use to control the target computer.

It was directed by Stuart Gillard, and starred Matt Lanter as a hacker named Will Farmer facing off with a government supercomputer called RIPLEY.

Whereas Corwin of the first series was a product of the late 1960s and 1970s and was more of a cross between a hardboiled detective in the vein of Raymond Chandler and a Highlander-like immortal with centuries of experience fighting his way through the stories, Merlin ( a product of the late 1980s and early 1990s when computers had become commonplace ) is a youthful hacker / magician finding himself in increasingly complex situations in the vein of modern hacker protagonists.

In the summer of 1994, word spread online of the Penet remailer being compromised, with the announcement being made at the hacker convention DEF CON II.

In hacker slang, " rain dance " refers to " any ceremonial action taken to correct a hardware problem, with the expectation that nothing will be accomplished.