Treatise on Hacker Ethics

The modern understanding of computer science is a constantly mutating beast. The individuals who have been driving the Information Age's technological innovation are known as "hackers." Most people understand hacker to refer to someone who breaks into computers and commits data-theft, but this is a gross misconception that I intend to ebb and erode away, slowly, like waves over a rock. 

Back in the 1990s, the word "Hacker" became a very scary word you would often find on the news in the United States. World governments, having only just begun to understand the implications of a unified world that was interconnected in the spiderweb of wires that was the internet, were struggling to keep up with the sharp minds of individuals who made it their life-mission to study, understand, manipulate, and master the art of computer science. In 1960, Massachusetts Institute of Technology students of computer science called those among them who could manipulate code and programs to do incredible, unfathomable things hackers. It meant they could read code like a children's book, understand it, create, modify, and manipulate it to do whatever they wanted or something for which it was not intended.

Disecting The Hacker Manifesto

Conscience of a Hacker is an essay written by Lloyd Blankenship in 1986 under the pseudonym The Mentor. The Mentor was a member of the original hacker group known as the Legion of Doom, which was well known and is still one of the most recognized hacker groups in history.

Widely considered the most influential piece of literature on the hacker subculture, Conscience of a Hacker, which later became known as The Hacker's Manifesto, was written while Blankenship was serving a prison term and was published by the popular Phrack e-zine "Volume 7, Issue 3." The Hacker's Manifesto has made numerous appearances in several literature pieces and movies, including the movie Hackers (1995). It has been copy-pasted into numerous articles, white-papers, forum postings, boards, and all manner of internet publications.

But what does it really say?

Hacker Evolution: Explaining the hacker subculture

Enter Our World

There is a lot of mystery and mystique surrounding the origin of hackers both in history and their modern development. How do hackers get started? What kind of person does it take to become one? Where do they go to learn? Why do they do it?

This easily and frequently asked question is a difficult one to answer. The kind of person that becomes enthralled with the idea of bending the power of the computational engine to their whim is easy to find, but rarely do you encounter one with the right mindset who is determined enough to pursue the skills necessary to do it. Unlike the movies make it seem, hacking is not easy, it is not theatrical or dramatic, and it certainly isn't done by Hugh Jackman with a few bottles of wine and 8 randomly arranged computer monitors.

Hacking
 --the combined understanding of computer science, networking and hardware for the purpose of testing, subverting and bypassing electronic security--

 is an art-form that takes years of dedicated study and the patience of a saint.

Those looking to become masters of the trade of computer intrusion are in for a very long, frustrating journey, but a rewarding one, if dedicated to seeing it to the end.