Saturday, January 16, 2010

A replacement for "cracker"

Like many other nerds, I've been thinking about an alternative for the misuse of the word "hacker" when referring to someone who infiltrates and steals/destroys information. The most common replacement, "cracker", is more accurate, but can still be misinterpreted as someone who circumvents copy-protection.

So, in light of this, I've decided to use "black hat". It is not the most elegant word available, but it is certainly the most precise one i can find.

I'd like to note that "hacker" is correctly defined here.