Comments on: Palin email guy : don’t call him a hacker

By: Mackenzie

Mackenzie — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 18:09:34 +0000

Er, phisher starts with “ph”

By: AnalogJunkie.com

AnalogJunkie.com — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 15:11:52 +0000

Well, that depends. I call a ‘hacker’ somebody that gains access through their own accord with no help from the individual who owns the account.

Somebody who sends fraudulent e-mails to the account owner in order to gain their sensitive data a ‘fisher’.

I call somebody who hands over their password to a fisher, and gets their account stolen a dumb ass.

What exactly did both of them do? : p

By: Joel

Joel — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 02:32:20 +0000

he did accessed the email account without permission.
yet the word hacker does not mean the same for u, a person involved in the IT world than to the preson in the jury who haven’t yet figured out how to play minessweeper

i certainly would not like my ignorant jury to think im involved in credit card frauds and stuff like that

By: Mackenzie

Mackenzie — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 22:51:05 +0000

Er, not calling Mark stupid. Calling the people 25 years ago that were getting it wrong on the news stupid. And the lawyer for perpetuating it.

By: Mackenzie

Mackenzie — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 22:48:56 +0000

Stop mixing up hackers and crackers, stupid media people! Grrr…”Hacker” does NOT have a negative connotation, or at least it didn’t until the media started using it wrong. “Cracker” is the bad one. Hackers are people with exceptional skills in regard to programming or hardware, usually, but I’m sure there are people finding other things to hack.

By: fcstan

fcstan — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 19:07:20 +0000

With that logic anyone who bangs his forehead to the keyboard and accidentally finds out the correct combination of a username and password is a hacker. They gained unauthorized access, did they not?

By: Eric

Eric — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 17:33:16 +0000

From what I read, this kid tried to reset her password, then researched the answers via google or something. After he reset the password to popcorn he posted the password on a cracker/hacker website. Google the definition of hacker, most say it is someone gaining unauthorized access. Since most definitions are slang, who is to say this kid isn’t a hacker?

By: Careful!

Careful! — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 17:14:27 +0000

Careful!

Calling “one who cracks”, a “Cracker”, might be hate speak too

muah ha ha

;)

By: EZG

EZG — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 15:58:25 +0000

Hrm. Sort of left a couple of orphaned words there. Whoops.

By: Stephen Williamson

Stephen Williamson — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 15:56:17 +0000

“If he accessed the email account without permission, doesn’t that fall within the parameters of hacking?”

No, strictly speaking it meets the parameters of CRACKING. Hacking generally refers to coding, and what he did didn’t require anything more than an educated guess.

By: EZG

EZG — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 15:55:03 +0000

Completely agree with this comment. As far as I remember reading he simply guessed or somehow got her password (reportedly it was “popcorn”)

This is not hacking in any sense. In fact I don’t see that he’s really done anything wrong. Sure, he illegally got into her email. I think he’s done us a service by showing how little she cared about her security to have such an easily guessable password. Considering the position she was nearly in (and is still in as Governor of Alaska) I feel better that somebody gets into her email as a joke than for malicious purposes. Give the kid a medal.

It wasn’t

By: fcstan

fcstan — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 15:46:30 +0000

>> If he accessed the email account without permission, doesn’t that fall within the parameters of hacking?

No, not really. If I recall correctly he just guessed the password. Sure it’s wrong and illegal, but not really hacking because he didn’t break or exploit any security measures. Guessing is not exploiting, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploit_(computer_security)