In your own opinion, do the terms hacker and cracker have the same connotation?

Question

I welcome different point of views and please make your answers have at least some sense

Answer 1

No.

As previous answers note, many people think "hacking" is compromising network security. While you can "hack" network security, that's not all that "hacking" is. Hacking is tamperiong with things you own or have a right to tamper with. Tampering with things you do not own or have a right to tamper with is cracking.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_hat

A hacker is never malicious. He simply likes to experiment with and modify things which he owns or has permission to tamper with. It's hacking if you modify a vacuum cleaner to take a different style of bag than it normally takes. It's hacking to create your own PHP function.

Crackers are thieves. They intentionally break end-user agreements and other property laws with the aim of depriving someone else of that person's property rights, such as defeating software copy protection or defacing his Web site.

The arguments for hacking are entirely defensible: Once you own something by giving fair consideration for it, it is yours, by even the simplest of interpretations of property right. If I get something from giving you something, we both are better off.

Also, Adam Smith, in Wealth Of Nations, taught us that it's our labor, our use of propety, that gives us the right to that property.

Therefore, changing something you own for the purpose of increasing your knowledge, or making that property more useful to your labor and output, is as basic a right as owning property. it doesn't violate the software makers' rights because he already received something of value which, at the time of sale, he agreed to accept from you in return for his software.

That he may not want you to improve upon his software is patently foolish; the mere act of using his software to accomplish a task is, in and of itself, an improvement and the entire idea behind capitalism.

Cracking exists so you can basically use someone else's property without giving him consideration, or for the purpose of allowing others to take from that person without giving him consideration. That's the definition of theft.

Therefore, any of the natural rights that are associated with property are gone in the case of cracking, because if property is a right that extends naturally from labor, then both parties' labor must be honored in any transaction for those natural rights to apply. I, as software maker, need to get something of value from you, the user, for it to be a fair transaction.

If you defeat a software protection scheme that is on software you purchase, and you don't distribute that cracked software to anyone else, then you are actually hacking, not cracking, and I would fully support your right to do so, especially if you can prove that in doing so, the software works better.

But most people associate cracking with distribution of the cracked software to a third party, which is wrong and rightfully should be treated as a crime.

Before anyone thinks I've been brainwashed by Microsoft, I urge them to review my Web site at http://www.dougv.com/blog and see for themselves that I give away all kinds of code under the Creative Commons Attribution / Share-Alike License 2.5, so not only am I familiar with Open Source in letter and spirit, I fully support the idea.

Answer 2

Hacker - Unauthorized user who attempts to or gains access to an information system
Cracker - A cracker is one who engages in one or more of the following: 1) breaks into a computer system; 2) figures out ways to bypass security or license protection in software; 3) intentionally breaches computer security. Contrary to popular belief, Cracker is not synonymous with Hacker.

Answer 3

semantics....a hacker breaks into your computer or network. a cracker is an old time word for a cowboy in the south. so called because he cracked his whip to get the cattle moving.