While many hackers have the knowledge, skills, and tools to attack computer systems, they generally lack the motivation to cause violence or severe economic or social harm.
While the vast majority of hackers may be disinclined towards violence, it would only take a few to turn cyber terrorism into reality.
The beginnings of the hacker culture as we know it today can be conveniently dated to 1961, the year MIT acquired the first PDP-1.
The workstation-class machines built by Sun and others opened up new worlds for hackers.
A critical factor in its success was that the X developers were willing to give the sources away for free in accordance with the hacker ethic, and able to distribute them over the Internet.
Berkeley hackers liked to see themselves as rebels against soulless corporate empires.
For the first time, individual hackers could afford to have home machines comparable in power and storage capacity to the minicomputers of ten years earlier - Unix engines capable of supporting a full development environment and talking to the Internet.
In early 1993, a hostile observer might have had grounds for thinking that the Unix story was almost played out, and with it the fortunes of the hacker tribe.
Should we fear hackers? Intention is at the heart of this discussion.
Are hackers a threat? The degree of threat presented by any conduct, whether legal or illegal, depends on the actions and intent of the individual and the harm they cause.
Then again, my case was all about the misappropriation of source code because I wanted to become the best hacker in the world and I enjoyed beating the security mechanisms.
The hacker mindset doesn't actually see what happens on the other side, to the victim.
I'm a really good hacker, but I'm not a sensible person.
It is only the inadequacy of the criminal code that saves the hackers from very serious prosecution.
I think Linux is a great thing, in the big picture. It's a great hacker's tool, and it has a lot of potential to become something more.
If you give a hacker a new toy, the first thing he'll do is take it apart to figure out how it works.
