| rdfs:comment | - The dark counterpart to the Playful Hacker, the cracker is a computer criminal. He may never leave his dark, monitor-lit room, but he can destroy lives and impoverish millions with his miraculous but misused skills, because Everything Is Online. With his Magical Computer, the cracker can break into the CIA, spy on anyone, cause train wrecks and airplane crashes, bankrupt entire nations, and most dramatically, practically wipe a person off the face of the earth by zeroing all his identity and credit records (because, of course, in Hollywood physical identity documents like birth certificates and passports are always null and void). He delights in mayhem and never objects to lining his pockets with money untraceably transferred from someone else's bank account.
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| abstract | - The dark counterpart to the Playful Hacker, the cracker is a computer criminal. He may never leave his dark, monitor-lit room, but he can destroy lives and impoverish millions with his miraculous but misused skills, because Everything Is Online. With his Magical Computer, the cracker can break into the CIA, spy on anyone, cause train wrecks and airplane crashes, bankrupt entire nations, and most dramatically, practically wipe a person off the face of the earth by zeroing all his identity and credit records (because, of course, in Hollywood physical identity documents like birth certificates and passports are always null and void). He delights in mayhem and never objects to lining his pockets with money untraceably transferred from someone else's bank account. Some people believe that a Cracker should not be called a "Hacker", and that the term "Hacker" should be reserved for good guys. Because authorities never know any better, and because the cracker is so good at hiding his trail, they often chase the innocent Playful Hacker who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. But in the end, the cracker will come to a bad end, either murdered by his employers/partners or electrocuted by his equipment, if his Good Counterpart doesn't get to him first. In security informatics, the real-life analogue of this character is sometimes called a "Black Hat". This is derived from old western movies based on the color of villains' hats, which people basically made up from whole cloth decades later. There, the opposite term is "white hat". There's also the "grey hat", which doesn't entirely fit into either camp. Not to be confused with the crime show starring Robbie Coltrane, or the derogatory term used for white trash. Or those biscuit-like things people eat with peanut butter. Or those biscuit-like things people eat with regular butter. And cheese. Or the very low-powered explosive devices with prizes in them that the British play with at Christmas... Examples of The Cracker include:
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