What is Hacking and Cracking.

Hacking and Cracking

Hacking, and cracking. Two different forms of Internet and computer related privacy and copyright breaches, usually malicious. In this article, I’ll be discussing the differences between hacking, and cracking. They are two completely different things, but people usually get confused between the two, they both end with a similar sound, or ‘acking’ (that’s probably why!) and they’re both malicious forms of cyber activity. In this article, I’ll be talking about the difference between hacking, and cracking. 

Let’s start off by explaining what the words mean, in computer vocabulary – that is. Hacking, is the act of stealing personal or private data, without the owner’s knowledge or consent, it could also include other things like stealing passwords, creating a bot net, or pretty much any act that breaches someone’s privacy, without their knowledge, or consent.

Now, on to cracking. Cracking is where edit a program’s source code, or you could create a program, like a key generator (more commonly known as a ‘keygen’), patch, or some sort of application that tricks an application in to thinking that a particular process has occurred. For example, a key generator and a patch for the Adobe Master Collection would trick the software in to thinking that the key entered is correct, and not let it verify the key with the Adobe master server. Cracking is pretty much looking for a back door in software, and exploiting it for malicious use or for a copyright breaching act.

The difference (if you have not noticed it yet) is that a hacker is someone that uses their extensive knowledge of computer logic and code for malicious purposes, while a cracker – looks for back doors in programs, and exploits those back doors. Cracking is generally less harmful than hacking. Hackers are usually involved with web related hacking, like MySQL interception, or phishing, other forms of hacking would include things like brute force, or password lifting.

Well, the difference is simple. One is more malicious than the other, crackers usually have an extensive knowledge in code related to Python and .NET (Visual Basic, C, C++, C#) and Objective C (Mac), while hackers are fluent in different forms of web code, like PHP, MySQL, Java Script, Ajax, and HTML and CSS. I hope, after reading this article, you’ve learnt what the difference between hacking, and cracking are. Basically, it’s just what they do, that’s the difference.