I am intimately attached to the computer industry. Hackers are a wide variety of geek types who can be anything from the "fun messing with computers" type, to those who write viruses and worms. World class hackers can hack their way past firewalls. Hackers commit the bulk of the fraud and crime against others on the IP network (Internet) and when you see one of these guys in the news it is always a hacker, not a cracker.

A cracker is someone who specifically concentrates on disabling, or otherwise renderring copyright or copy protection on software, Sattelite communications, cable TV, SS7 networks, etc. They are the "Robin Hood" types who rarely commit crimes against other people, but think nothing of killing some profit for money hungry companies. A cracker will crack a program not to use it himself, but rather just to show his skills and move on to the next thing so the underground "Warez" community can reap the fruits of his labor. The best crackers in the world can disable just about any copy protection scheme these days, even the most sophisticated. The Warez community is huge World Wide and one literally can get ANY mainstream software title if they look long enough.

I watched one of the really skilled crackers once (he worked for Sandia Labs as a security analyst) He cracked the entire MacroMedia "trial" software library in a matter of hours. He then sent his results to the company and they changed their scheme. Of course, the companies have gotten much smarter now and many report keys and IP addresses to a copyright server so if you pilfer the software you may end up on the SPA's hit list.

When I was in college I could disable just about any hardware Dongle I came across. At that time, all one needed was an 8 bit digital signal analyzer. Today, a USB protocol analyzer can do the same thing, but fortunately, for the companies who write software these things are very expensive and most people have better things to do with a few grand than crack software.


I have used Warez in the past to evaluate whether I will buy something, same thing with Napster Music downloads, etc. In every case I used something for a while and if I liked it enough, I bought it. If I didn't, I tossed it. Most companies now though have a try before you buy download so there is no excuse to steal software, music, or really any service any more.


DP