10 Hackers Who Made History | Hacker News Reader

10 Hackers Who Made History

maximumpc.com

33 pointszoowar7 comments

The article kind of confuses hacker as in "Linus Torvalds is a hacker", and hacker as in "Kevin Mitnick is hacker". While I don't think the word cracker will ever be popular, at least we should not mix the concepts.

The article uses "Black-Hat" and "White-Hat" terms to differentiate them. These are explained clearly at the beginning of the article. There doesn't seem to be any confusion.

As I understand it, both of these refer to the "cracker" definition; one is the "illegal hacker", the other is closer to "security consultant" with a hands-on connotation. "Hacker" in the Linus sense is totally different.

Did this line confuse any one else?

    As a graduate student at Cornell University, Robert Morris created his claim to fame: the computer worm.

For a site writing a list of "hackers" I would hope they could tell the difference between the father and rtm.

Jeff Moss. Founder of DefCon and Blackhat Briefings, and currently ICANN's Chief Security Officer, and Advisor on the DHS Advisory Council.

I was expecting to see George Hotz, the famous iPhone hacker on the list.

Surprised Alan Turing is not on the list.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com