Just what is a hack?
Hi everyone Leo Notenboom here for Askleo.com
with an interesting question that I think a lot of us take for granted.
But when you think about it is a little bit more complex than you think.
Here's the question.
"I see the word hack getting used a lot.
And by a lot, I mean seemingly everywhere
every day, but not all the uses make sense.
What's it really mean?"
Well, actually, the word hack can mean
several different things depending on context.
Let's start with the most important definition, the one that I think people
worry about the most, and that is hack in the sense of an account hack.
Hack in this context really means nothing more than unauthorized access.
Seriously, that's it.
If someone who shouldn't have access
to your account does, they've hacked your account.
If someone has unauthorized access to data that they shouldn't have access to.
Well, they've hacked the data.
It really does mean nothing more than unauthorized access in this context.
Now it builds on prior definitions or other definitions of the term.
For example, there's also the concept of what I'll call a clever hack.
So that needs a little bit more
explanation, especially when it comes to computers.
There are all sorts of opportunities for these kinds of clever hacks.
Here's an example, a very oversimplified example.
If you want to multiply a number by two, there are several approaches you can take.
You can, for example, simply go
nine (in this case) times two, and you come up with 18.
Or since you know that it's two, you can simply say nine plus nine, also 18.
But inside, the computer numbers are represented in binary,
and when you take a binary number and shift it to the left, in other words,
you simply add a zero to the right hand side,
you've also multiplied it by two.
So all you've done is you've shifted
the bit pattern for that number one binary digit to the left that multiplies by two.
The latter can be considered a clever or
an interesting solution to the problem, a solution that might not be obvious.
That might in some circles be considered a hack.
It's important in computers because,
for example, multiplication is slower than addition, and addition is typically
slower than just shifting a number by one bit.
So folks who are interested in programing efficiently are coming up with code
that runs as fast as possible, are often looking for these kinds
of tricks or hacks to make their code run faster.
Sometimes the hacks are obvious and simple.
Sometimes they're fairly obscure but have quite a bit of a payoff.
There's another hack that you've probably
heard of, and that's what I'll refer to as a growth hack or a life hack.
It's more of a conceptual version of the clever hack that I just talked about.
It's something that you could do that's not obvious, that might make your life
better, might make you more intelligent more quickly than traditional means.
Once again, it's a clever, perhaps not obvious approach to solving
a problem or gaining an edge that not everybody understands or knows about.
So finally, we get down to hackers.
Put simply, hackers hack using hacks.
By that I mean hackers.
The individuals who are doing this kind of stuff, they hack, in other words,
gain unauthorized access to various forms of information or accounts
by exploiting these clever tricks, these other hacks, this other kind of hack
that allows them to do the things that they do.
Most of these clever tricks,
these hacks are exploitations of various vulnerabilities, but nonetheless,
they are clever, they are not obvious, and they are something that the hackers
then go out of their way to try and discover and exploit.
So hackers, the people who do it,
hack the first definition, gain unauthorized access by using hacks.
The second definition, these clever or unobvious tricks to make things happen.
And of course,
hacker culture is kind of built around this ability to discover these things
that can be exploited through means of various hacks.
I hope this helps clarify the definition a little bit about
what it means to be a hacker, hack something or have an account be hacked.
If there's only one definition to really
remember from this, it really is the first one.
That's the most important one,
and that's the one that probably impacts you the most on an ongoing basis.
A hack really does mean nothing more than unauthorized access.
I hope that was helpful for links, for updates, for comments and more,
visit askleo.com/133585.
I'm Leo Notenboom.
This is Askleo.com.Thanks for watching.