Go up to a random person in the street. Ask them what a “hacker” is, and 9.9 times out of 10, they will say “someone who hacks into computers/steals your personal data/gives you viruses”.

The popular press has done nothing to help this, every other week in some red-topped tabloid there’s a story claiming “Hackers break into x”, but the thing is –

We aren’t the ones breaking into your bank account and siphoning off money for their own personal gain. The names for the people who do that kind of stuff are “computer criminals”, “Nigerian 419ers” and many other terms, but not hackers. For this we have only mass media to blame, people believe what they see on TV and, unfortunately, take it as gospel.

A hacker is someone who hacks things. Hackers wrote Apache, the software this blog is running on, because many people added “hacks” to make Apache better. Hackers wrote ModSSL/OpenSSL as a “hack” to Apache, without which you wouldn’t be able to conduct secure purchases online.

So for those of you still unconvinced, I urge you to watch a documentary called “Hackers are People Too”, by Ashley Schwartau, a Def/Toorcon regular and somewhat talented film-maker. It portrays us in a light that the general public usually don’t see us in, which is a welcome change.

Remember guys: Hug a hacker today! =3