They are both the same thing...Sort of. A hacker is a person who is proficient with computers and/or programming to an elite level where they know all of the in's and out's of a system. There is NO illegality involved with being a hacker. A cracker is a hacker who uses their proficiency for personal gains outside of the law. EX: stealing data, changing bank accounts, distributing viruses etc. What the hacker does with their knowledge of systems within the definition of the law is what defines them as a hacker vs a cracker. It's then safe to say that all crackers are hackers, but not all hackers are crackers. This is an important distinction. The term cracker and hacker are used interchangeably (albeit incorrectly) largely due to the ignorance of the general populace, especially the media.
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Hacking is fooling around with source code and learning how things work. (Hacking can also mean playing a creative practical joke. --JARGON file) Cracking is illegally breaking into computer systems and stealing information.
Cracking is the act of gaining access to an account or system by guessing a privileged user's credentials. This is often accomplished by brute force, using programs or algorithms to systematically guess at the credentials, possibly using personal information known about the privileged user, until access is granted. Most cracking attempts can be thwarted by rate-limiting access attempts.
A variation of cracking involved somehow acquiring a hash of the user's credentials (sometimes by hacking, other times from an insider or a careless user thinking their hash is uncrackable), and running brute force tests against the hash before attempting to access the system. While there are ways of reducing this threat, rate-limiting access attempts is insufficient by itself.
Hacking is usually considered the unauthorized access of a system or of information without having credentials, often exploiting a weakness in the system's firewall or other security measures. Cracking is not usually considered a form of hacking by network security experts, though users compromised by cracking will often claim to have "been hacked".
In the early days of computing and networking, a "hacker" was a programmer, whether malicious or honest, and was so named from the sounds of punch cards being created, and later, the hacking and clacking sound of proficient typists writing their code. As "white-hat" programming professionals began to choose other titles, the term "hacker" took on a negative connotation.
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No.