During yesterday’s conversation people kept asking about why we use the term “hacker” instead of “programmer.” This idea got me thinking about how the idea of being a hacker sounds like a cooler occupation instead of being a programmer. I think this is mostly because of the media’s contribution to the stereotype of being the cool (white male) through shows like Mr. Robot, video games such as Watchdog and media coverage of movements such as Anonymous. These influences have quite a vast impact to make us all create a mental visual stereotype of a male (probably white), wearing jeans and a hoodie spending long hours breaking into internet infrastructures to do some mischievous activities that may either benefit them, their friends, or the public.
The terminology of hacking didn’t get used to mean something technological until the 1950s at MIT and its connotations were positive (Zamora 2018). The term meant to figure out a solution that wasn’t found in a manual for a tech problem. The term quickly changed to mean something evil and by the 1970s the word had evolved into the idea of someone who lives and breathes computers with the ability to make a computer do anything they desire (Zamora 2018). By 1975, a glossary for computer programmers defined a hacker as “a malicious meddler who tries to discover sensitive information by poking around.” The term didn’t enter popular culture until the 1990s, it was at this time that the ideas of a hacker as someone who utilizes technology (primarily computers) to get unauthorized access to systems or data started to really gain popularity (Zamora 2018).
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Hackers can be grouped into smaller groups, someone could be termed a white hat hacker, a grey hat, or a black hat. A white hat hacker is thought of as an ethical hacker, their main job is to help protect people from having their data stolen by grey or black hat hackers. Wendy Chung in her essay “Habitual New Media,” talks about how hackers (white hat hackers) are software companies’ best friends since they’re constantly making it an obligation for companies to require users to update their computer endlessly in order to avoid security defects (Chun 2). Grey hats are people who aren’t good or evil. One situation that was explained in my research was that a grey hat hacker is someone that could break into a system and then would tell that specific organization of the weakness. Black hats are hackers that strictly want to cause damage to a system or to gain access to information they don’t have permission too.
The style of the hacker has also changed, according to senior security researcher at Kaspersky Lab, Brian Bartholomew, when he started in the industry around 2000 he did not see this hoodie wearing cool boy stereotype in the press (Larson 2017). In the 1980s and 1990s hackers looked more like cyberpunks with long jackets and boots. In 1995, when the film Hackers came out, the style started to change to show hackers more as young, skateboarding delinquents. At this time the cyberpunk style faded out and the hoodie started to replace it. Hackers started to embrace this style option, and some have started wearing hoodies as “member only” apparel at computer conferences (Larson 2017). The "hacker style" is still evolving and style magazines for men are even writing about what it means to wear "hacker style" such an example is GQ and their profile of Christopher Wylie from Cambridge Analytica.
Hacktivism is another area of discussion and probably another reason for people to think that being a hacker is “cool.” I feel that this mostly has to do with the emergence of Anonymous and the publicity it has gained from its actions. Anonymous came to be around 2003 on 4chan and the goal was to create a revolutionary digital global brain ("Anonymous (group)" 2018). Members of the group fashion a Guy Fawkes mask modeled after the graphic novel and film V for Vendetta. Anonymous’ philosophy is that there is no leader and since the movement is decentralized no action can be credited to the movement as a whole. The movement also has three rules:
Don’t show one’s identity
Don’t talk about Anonymous
Don’t attack the media.
The movement has done numerous DDoS attacks towards governments, government institutions, agencies, corporations and specifically the Church of Scientology ("Anonymous (group)" 2018). In 2008, Anonymous began Project Chanology with many protests, pranks and hacks that specifically besieged The Church of Scientology. The actions started because the church was trying to remove a highly well-known interview with Tom Cruise in January 2008. The Project of Chanology first started off as a YouTube video that was a letter to the Church of Scientology saying that they saw the attempt to remove this interview was a form of internet censorship. Anonymous’ goal was to “expel the church from the Internet” and it was attempted by DDoS attacks, prank calls and other activities that could interrupt the Church of Scientology’s operations ("Anonymous (group)" 2018).
I find it interesting how the term “hacker” has become this cool thing because of the media’s portrayal of the cool, quiet, hoodie wearing white guy like what we see in Mr. Robot. The media’s portrayal of the hacker has influenced my visual stereotype of what a hacker should look like and I am assuming that is the case for many. During my little bit of research about hackers, I did find that the stereotype is slowly changing from white male to everyone regardless of race and gender with feminist hackerspaces and publicity of many different people doing white hat hacking. This change however is quite slow and may take some time for us to fully disassociate a white man in a hoodie when thinking about hackers and the hacker uniform.
“Anonymous (Group).” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 17 Nov. 2018, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anonymous_(group).
Chun, Wendy Hui Kyong. Updating to Remain the Same Habitual New Media. The MIT Press, 2017.
Larson, Selena. “Why Do Hackers Always Wear Hoodies? Behind the Stereotype.” CNNMoney, Cable News Network, 26 May 2017, money.cnn.com/2017/05/26/technology/hacker-hoodie-stereotype-hacking/.
Zamora, Wendy. “Debunking the Hacker Stereotype: Who Are the Real Monsters?” Malwarebytes Labs, Malwarebytes, 16 Aug. 2018, blog.malwarebytes.com/101/2016/10/debunking-hacker-stereotypes-who-are-the-real-monsters/.
I really liked the information you found on hackers. I think my main question is how and why the terminology surrounding hackers has transformed so much in the past fifty years. I think maybe one issue that could have given rise to this transformation stems from the fear that our society has toward technology. The very division of good vs. evil hackers kind of rings of the binary feelings we have toward technology and the internet.