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NeantHumain
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25 Nov 2005, 1:23 am

I am beginning to suspect that what hitherto has been known informally as the hacker personality is actually the combination of two separate and etiologically distinct psychiatric constructs: Asperger's syndrome and antisocial personality disorder. Together, these two disorders indicate a propensity to criminal behavior on the Internet.

Most hackers are noted as being socially inept and often loners when offline. Certainly, they have suffered mercilessly at the hands of their peers. This lack of social skills fits perfectly with a diagnosis of Asperger's syndrome.

People with Asperger's syndrome have "restricted and stereotyped patterns of interest." In the hacker's case, his interest would be learning about new computer exploits and vulnerabilities. He would thoroughly enjoy exploring and tinkering with his system; this is exactly why many hackers choose Linux, which is much more work to configure properly than Windows usually is.

Hackers also have a notable antisocial streak. The act of hacking itself is a violation of the property rights of others. Hackers fundamentally lack respect for other people's right to privacy or security of their possessions. They often rationalize their vandalism and trespassing as a quest for knowledge or even a good service to the victim! They may believe that people who leave their computer systems vulnerable can only expect people to hack them.

Antisocial people are notoriously sensation seeking and enjoy partaking in criminal activity for the sheer thrill of it. Many hackers also describe a thrill in their illegal activity.

Hackers are deceptive by nature. They use numerous aliases like "ZeroCool" to mask their true identity. This Internet identity then becomes capable of all they feared doing offline. Their online identity gains status in IRC channels and with hacking clans as the number of "boxes owned" increases. Narcissistic as they are, they never cease to brag about their illicit accomplishments without even thinking about the harm they're doing to other people or the risk they're posing to themselves.

Hackers have to retaliate against perceived slights; their reputation as the baddest hacker of them all is at stake. Most of these hackers are pubescent boys and will say such things as, "j00 b0x3n w1ll b3 pwnd!! !! !! !!!111111" if you express contempt of their "skills." They will frequently make attempts to destroy your computer but utterly fail because they're endlessly stupid in addition to their being petty and vicious.

Many hackers are also notoriously manipulative, able to pretend to be an important corporate executive to get critical information from hapless secretaries. They call their trickery "social engineering." They teach it to their apprentices as they would teach basic programming or any other art needed to hack: very logically.

Basically, hackers appear to share many traits from both Asperger's syndrome and antisocial personality disorder. Technically, antisocial personality disorder cannot be diagnosed if a pervasive developmental disorder is present, but many hackers may have an antisocial personality with subthreshold autism or vice versa.



Larval
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25 Nov 2005, 12:11 pm

NeantHumain wrote:
I am beginning to suspect that what hitherto has been known informally as the hacker personality is actually the combination of two separate and etiologically distinct psychiatric constructs: Asperger's syndrome and antisocial personality disorder. Together, these two disorders indicate a propensity to criminal behavior on the Internet.


Do you mean hacker or cracker?

Quote:
Most hackers are noted as being socially inept and often loners when offline. Certainly, they have suffered mercilessly at the hands of their peers. This lack of social skills fits perfectly with a diagnosis of Asperger's syndrome.


This matches the sterotype of hackers, but doesn't really fit most crackers.

Quote:
People with Asperger's syndrome have "restricted and stereotyped patterns of interest." In the hacker's case, his interest would be learning about new computer exploits and vulnerabilities. He would thoroughly enjoy exploring and tinkering with his system; this is exactly why many hackers choose Linux, which is much more work to configure properly than Windows usually is.


This could fit either, or both.

Quote:
Hackers also have a notable antisocial streak. The act of hacking itself is a violation of the property rights of others. Hackers fundamentally lack respect for other people's right to privacy or security of their possessions. They often rationalize their vandalism and trespassing as a quest for knowledge or even a good service to the victim! They may believe that people who leave their computer systems vulnerable can only expect people to hack them.


Well, look-see cracking is not a violation of property rights (though it is a violation of privacy) and most look-see crackers would rather shoot themselves than deliberately screw up someone else's system. They just want to take a look and see what it does. (I'm not justifying what they do, I'm merely saying that it is not as bad as you imply.)

There are crackers who are just as bad as you state, but those are either out to destroy other computers for fun or they have a hidden agenda (steal other companies trade secrets and selll to highest bidder for example).

Quote:
Antisocial people are notoriously sensation seeking and enjoy partaking in criminal activity for the sheer thrill of it. Many hackers also describe a thrill in their illegal activity.

Hackers are deceptive by nature. They use numerous aliases like "ZeroCool" to mask their true identity. This Internet identity then becomes capable of all they feared doing offline. Their online identity gains status in IRC channels and with hacking clans as the number of "boxes owned" increases. Narcissistic as they are, they never cease to brag about their illicit accomplishments without even thinking about the harm they're doing to other people or the risk they're posing to themselves.


Crackers, you mean. This is true.

Quote:
Hackers have to retaliate against perceived slights; their reputation as the baddest hacker of them all is at stake. Most of these hackers are pubescent boys and will say such things as, "j00 b0x3n w1ll b3 pwnd!! !! !! !!!111111" if you express contempt of their "skills." They will frequently make attempts to destroy your computer but utterly fail because they're endlessly stupid in addition to their being petty and vicious.


This neither fits hackers or crackers. A cracker who wants to destroy your system will most likely succeed - or if he fails, it is because the system is very well secured. Same for most hackers - though none of them would ever want to destroy anybody's system, even if they have the know-how to do so.

What you are describing are wannabe's, they aren't really crackers. They're just script kiddies who have no technical understanding of what they're doing.

Quote:
Many hackers are also notoriously manipulative, able to pretend to be an important corporate executive to get critical information from hapless secretaries. They call their trickery "social engineering." They teach it to their apprentices as they would teach basic programming or any other art needed to hack: very logically.


Hackers can be very social naive and very honest, like aspies. Crackers are the ones who perform the feats of social engineering and deception.

Quote:
Basically, hackers appear to share many traits from both Asperger's syndrome and antisocial personality disorder. Technically, antisocial personality disorder cannot be diagnosed if a pervasive developmental disorder is present, but many hackers may have an antisocial personality with subthreshold autism or vice versa.


Hackers are similar to Aspies (in the same way nerds are - in fact many hackers consider themselves to be the ultimate form of nerdom). Crackers are definitely antisocial in many ways (though look-see crackers less than the other varieties) but they aren't really loners. Many of them work alone out of necessity (no one to turn them in to the cops to make a deal when the going gets tough).



rpm2004
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01 Dec 2005, 1:48 am

Larval wrote:

This matches the sterotype of hackers, but doesn't really fit most crackers.

...cracker as in white guy?

Image


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Larval
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01 Dec 2005, 4:16 pm

rpm2004 wrote:
Larval wrote:

This matches the sterotype of hackers, but doesn't really fit most crackers.

...cracker as in white guy?


No.

From dictionary.com:
Quote:
cracker



<jargon> An individual who attempts to gain unauthorised
access to a computer system. These individuals are often
malicious and have many means at their disposal for breaking
into a system. The term was coined ca. 1985 by hackers in
defence against journalistic misuse of "hacker". An earlier
attempt to establish "worm" in this sense around 1981--82 on
Usenet was largely a failure.

Use of both these neologisms reflects a strong revulsion
against the theft and vandalism perpetrated by cracking rings.
The neologism "cracker" in this sense may have been influenced
not so much by the term "safe-cracker" as by the non-jargon
term "cracker", which in Middle English meant an obnoxious
person (e.g., "What cracker is this same that deafs our ears /
With this abundance of superfluous breath?" -- Shakespeare's
King John, Act II, Scene I) and in modern colloquial American
English survives as a barely gentler synonym for "white
trash".

While it is expected that any real hacker will have done some
playful cracking and knows many of the basic techniques,
anyone past larval stage is expected to have outgrown the
desire to do so except for immediate practical reasons (for
example, if it's necessary to get around some security in
order to get some work done).

Contrary to widespread myth, cracking does not usually involve
some mysterious leap of hackerly brilliance, but rather
persistence and the dogged repetition of a handful of fairly
well-known tricks that exploit common weaknesses in the
security of target systems. Accordingly, most crackers are
only mediocre hackers.

Thus, there is far less overlap between hackerdom and
crackerdom than the mundane reader misled by
sensationalistic journalism might expect. Crackers tend to
gather in small, tight-knit, very secretive groups that have
little overlap with the huge, open hacker poly-culture; though
crackers often like to describe *themselves* as hackers, most
true hackers consider them a separate and lower form of life,
little better than virus writers. Ethical considerations
aside, hackers figure that anyone who can't imagine a more
interesting way to play with their computers than breaking
into someone else's has to be pretty losing.


Quote:
Image


Not that either. ;)