Difference b/w

Hacker v/s Cracker

Hacker 

If we turn to the formal definition in the Internet Users’ Glossary under RFC 1392, a hacker is “A person who delights in having an intimate understanding of the internal workings of a system, computers and computer networks in particular. The term is often misused in a pejorative context, where ‘cracker’ would be the correct term.”

In simpler terms, a hacker is someone who uses his/her skills and knowledge to find vulnerabilities in computer systems and helps improve and patch those vulnerabilities. The knowledge they possess about programming, various computer languages, code and general computer security is advanced and used for morally good purposes. They’re normally security professionals who can be hired by organizations to try and break into their systems, to audit DNS and their networks so they can identify any flaws they may have. They’re often employed as part of the red team and blue team.

When hackers find a vulnerability or a threat, they document the process and notify the organization who hired them, or the software vendor who built the system, so that the vulnerability can be fixed before being exploited by malicious actors.

We often see the term white hat, or ethical hacker, linked to these good guys who use their skills for defense purposes.

Crackers

Let’s now jump to the formal definition of a cracker: “A cracker is an individual who attempts to access computer systems without authorization. These individuals are often malicious, as opposed to hackers, and have many means at their disposal for breaking into a system.”

Crackers are also called “black hats.” They look for backdoors in programs and systems, exploit those backdoors, and steal private information for use in a malicious way.

While hackers work to help organizations and individuals secure their systems and networks, crackers have a different objective in mind. When they break the security of a network, they do it illegally without the owner’s permission and they do it for personal gain. The skills and knowledge they possess are used expressly to breach security with malicious intent. Their goal may be to steal credit card information, to get private data that can be leveraged for illegal activity, to get private data and sell it, or to simply destroy the data.

Crackers are the culprits who engage in cybercrime; they launch phishing campaigns on company employees, and crack devices ranging from routers and laptops to printers and fax machines to get into an organization’s network. They often prey on companies when they’re at their most vulnerable, such as during mergers and acquisitions, or they attack vendors in an organization’s supply chain as they’re most often the weakest link.

All attack vectors for crackers have the same final outcome: obtaining data illegally. The data can be compromised, but not always — as crackers can have different motivations behind their illegal activities.