South African hacker history South African hacker history A brief history of computer hacking in South Africa. Note: A distinction needs to be made between a "white hat" hacker who hacks out of intellectual curiosity, and a "black hat" hacker who has ulterior motives. In recent times there has been an attempt to restore the meaning of the term hacker, which is still associated with creating code, and its secondary meaning, which has become the stuff of Hollywood legend. The term "cracker" is a better description for those who break into secured system by exploiting computer vulnerabilities. Activists are trapped by BOSS agents who
Hacker Hacker A computer hacker is any skilled computer expert that uses their technical knowledge to overcome a problem. While "hacker" can refer to any skilled computer programmer, the term has become associated in popular culture with a "security hacker", someone who, with their technical knowledge, uses bugs or exploits to break into computer systems. Reflecting the two types of hackers, there are two definitions of the word "hacker": Today, mainstream usage of "hacker" mostly refers to computer criminals, due to the mass media usage of the word since the 1980s. This includes what hacker slang calls "script kiddies", people breaking