Introduction

I. What is hacking?

If you use the term 'hacking' in public areas, thoughts that will run through the minds of the people around you will be: "People who break into computers. People who steal private information. Criminals, Terrorists.", and things along those lines. This is because the term 'hacking' has been twisted by ignorance. The same ignorance that informs us of 'accurate' news every day. The same ignorance that lies about a term so pure just to make it self seem stronger. This ignorance has been fed into the minds of the people around us, almost spoon-fed. The public is a mindless pawn. It will believe whatever this ignorance feeds it. I say we take a stand. I say we wage war with ignorance.

Why?, you may ask. Why would all of these people twist something like that? It's because it was US who embraced the Information Age. It was US who felt right, understood and accepted, and at home through our phone lines. Not them. They were too busy feeding ignorance to the ignorant. They would rather pollute a term and stereotype all hackers as criminals than actually hear our sides of the stories or see our views on everything.

II. What is a hacker?

To me, a hacker is anyone willing to push farther and farther for the gain of knowledge and for the experience. This doesn't have to be in the technology area necessarily, however the term 'hacker' in this tutorial will be directly associated with computers.

Among hacker ethics, there are two types of hackers: white hats and black hats. Some even consider the 'gray hat', which is in between. A white hat is what a hacker truly i. They are in it for the knowledge, the experience, and because the Internet feels like a real home; like a place where they belong. They feel as though they know everyone on the Internet, even though they will probably never meet in person. Black hats, on the other hand, are not real hackers. They are people who will do everything just to be destructive. They are one reason that caused the pollution of the term 'hacker'. Many black hats are script kiddies, or 'skiddies'. This is a term used to identify people who download programs and use them for what they want to do. All they typically know is what to 'click' and what to 'type', but not how everything works. They will use these programs to cause damage and they won't even know what is going on. All they know is where to click to 'hack'.