What is the difference between a Hacker and a Cracker?

Well, in my opinion everything makes a difference between these two. Both of them are like the similar poles of the magnet which will never attract each other. Let me explain their jobs to you all, job here means what they actually do. This post is “not” a comparison between the hackers and the crackers because both of them are equally important for the web. If there won’t be any crackers, then there won’t be any hackers too. Let’s get started up with the basic differences.

Hackers: White Hats

Hackers are the white hat people. Hackers are the people who fight against the odds, rather crackers. Let me give you an example. If one site is defaced then the defacer will be called the cracker while the one who will patch it up and make it look what it looked alike before being cracked is called a hacker. In the nutshell, Crackers are the criminals while the Hackers are the cops. Hackers have the deep knowledge about the latest and the oldest exploits. According to a survey conducted by a Chinese firm, there is just one hacker for 127 crackers and this is a really big score. Hackers, obviously, are rare to find while you can find hundreds of crackers. Hackers are even hired by big firms to check the security of their site. Another name for hackers is Ethical Hacker but they have certain ethics according to which they work. White hats are, generally, the ex-crackers who have changed the profession either because of law’s fear or moral values. Now, let’s take a look at the crackers’ job profile.

Crackers: Black Hats

Crackers are the black hats. Crackers are the people who challenge the white hats. The most common method of challenging is cracking one site’s security and then either leaking the confidential information or defacing. In both the cases the webmasters face a lot of difficulties. When a cracker defaces a website, it is the job of a hacker to patch it up. Crackers are even sent to jails for doing this and some of them have even been assassinated. In the nutshell, crackers are the outlaws. When a cracker breach the security of one site, he/she uses all the possible methods to hide himself/herself, rather stay anonymous but it is the cyber science or the foolishness of the crackers which doesn’t help their cause and leads to their arrest, well, in most of the cases. Crackers generally don’t have a lot of knowledge about the security subject; some of them download tools which help them in cracking.

Who’s Dangerous?

I have already mentioned that this post won’t act as the comparison between these two but still some of you might be thinking who’s more powerful. Well, let me tell you the bitter truth. Crackers, in my opinion, are more powerful than hackers because they don’t have abide by the law and they also don’t have the thing called “fear”! Another reason of the same is that crackers can crack/deface any site and what makes the situation worse is that sometimes it takes months for the webmaster to accept the fact that his/her site’s security has been breached.