I don't know if I'm a
hacker or not.
I'm certainly not a cracker - I know nothing about networks beyond what your average computer literate geek knows.
However, I'm hardly a script kiddie either - I don't use terms such as k-rad and l33t. I don't generally use off the shelf exploits either.
What I do do is come up with some interesting ways of manoeuvering around obsticles: for example, WinLock. WinLock was a lame security tool which stopped people from doing anything. Notepad was forbidden. We couldn't use the machine as nothing had been installed on it (except, of course, WinLock) and the whole idea was that the machine was for CD-Roms.
So I made my way around WinLock, by bypassing the parts in the Autoexec.bat and Config.sys files and the part loaded in Win.ini. And it worked. (I still wasn't allowed to install the CD-Roms, despite being a pupil librarian, since that was the IT staffs job. It never got done.)
So I put the restrictions back in place, making sure there were no traces.
I also made my way around Cumberland Family Tree for Windows. The version I had was incredibly buggy, and we weren't going to shell out £35 for the pleasure of owning it. When the next version came out fixing a few bugs but leaving the majority, we realised that it was time-trapped. So I set to work on disabling it.
I tried to uninstall and reinstall it. Didn't work. This suggested to me that the time data was kept in a separate location. Got to be Windows! A quick look in win.ini yielded data2=5827482 or something similar. I made it a few tens of thousands bigger. We had another two months. I changed it to 9999999. We now had a seventy year trial software. We then upgraded to Personal Ancestory File as soon as possible. Far better software.
More recently, I discovered a hack that allowed me to discover peoples cookies on sites which allowed use of unmoderated HTML. With a little bit of JavaScript I was able to publish peoples cookies. Big wow, you might say. But on some sites this means that you can 'become' that person (ie: the cookie identifies the individual) and cause quite a bit of damage. How would you like it if someone decided, under your name, to send all of your nodes to be nuked, started flame wars in the catbox and generally messed up your e2ing life?
I alerted, like any good hacker, the authorities, who quickly said 'Ah. Oh. Eee....'. Within twelve hours the loophole was quickly sealed off in most incarnations.
So am I a hacker?
Now to the small print, the disussions between the noders.
Firstly, Sir.Cracked's point about hacker being a title which is bestowed upon you, not one you decide you are. That's why I asked this node in the first place!
Why do geeks claim to not be interested in titles, yet grasp at hacker, guru, whizzkid? Simple - they're so socially inept that they can't get any 'real world' titles - dude, hoopy frood... so they say "Hey - I don't care. It doesn't matter." And they believe this. But when they can have a title (within their own culture) they feel starved of the attention it brings and try desperately for it. Maybe.
I feel also that tribbel confuses different meanings of the word hacker with the one I am trying to ask. I realise that this meaning is fluid... hence the question. I would like to thank Sir.Cracked for putting his suggestion forwards.