Hacker vs. Cracker

For most people, the word Hacker creates visions of an ingenious but immoral computer geek at the keyboard trying to steal your credit card information, identity, or bank account information. But the term "Hacker" was not originally intended to be associated with Internet crimes; rather, it was an endearing term to denote a subculture of like-minded people who cared about open-sourcing, sharing, and really understanding the ins and outs of the systems they worked on. The Hacker subculture is said to originate at MIT in the 1960's, but at the same time and all over the US these subcultures grew independently, such as at the University of California, Berkeley and Carnegie Melon University.  These groups of academics shared similar philosophies of a dislike of secrecy and standards, preferring freedom to "hack to learn" and open-sourcing.

RFC 1392 that contains the Internet Users' Glossary defines a hacker as "A person who delights in having an intimate understanding of the internal workings of a system, computers, and computer networks in particular."  The original academic Hackers of this nature tend to be focused around Unix and TCP/IP.

For a true Hacker, who loves and respects this technology, it is somewhat of an insult to be degraded in the media and through mass-hysteria in a negative light. While a true Hacker loves and respects technology and wants to use it to further the progression of the Internet and networking, the type of Hacker the media denotes is one that uses technology to "do harm" through theft (identity, monetary), viruses, and illegal network security break-ins. True Hackers call these low-lifes "Crackers" and it is the job of Network Forensic tools to crack down on those Crackers.

Crackers or Hackers, the term is a moot point for IT professionals who are tasked with protecting their company's network. While true Hackers are worthy to be hired on their merits of ingenious know-how into the inner workings of networks, Crackers, on the other hand, are suspect based on acts of infiltration, and worthy of investigation. What better tool for investigation but NI, Sandstorm's authoritative Network Forensics tool.

There is a comfort in knowing the engineers behind NI. If you stop to consider the people behind the technology, you may feel an extra sense of security that the architects behind NetIntercept are former MIT geeks who "get it." NetIntercept, the brain child of James Van Bokkelen, takes into account untold years of experience and networking knowledge.   With a high percentage of dollars going into R&D, the world gets a superior product - a comforting thought when you're in the hot seat because a Cracker got the better of you.