Noncryptographic Security Issues - Codes: The Guide to Secrecy from Ancient to Modern Times - page 395

Software such as Nessus, discussed above, was written with the legitimate
intention of assisting sysadmins to secure their systems, so although they
may be used by hackers, they may be employed by sysadmins to patch
the holes in their security schemes as well.
6. Restrict Access : You may restrict access to your computer or a sysadmin
may restrict access to the server, the latter by specifying a command in a
configuration file, and the former using software associated with a firewall,
for instance.
7. Tiger Teams — Sneakers : These are typically temporary teams formed
for the purpose of breaking down the defenses of computer systems, pene-
trating security, and thus testing security measures in an effort to uncover,
and eventually patch, security holes. These may be white-hat hackers,
called sneakers 10.20 in this case. Hiring reputable people is key here since
having anyone poke around inside your computer system is a very risky
business. We will not even mention the political aspects, only the tech-
nical ones. Testing firewalls is an important exercise since certain weak
versions exist and they should be ferreted out. Moreover, this should
not be a one-time endeavor. In other words, use a reputable tiger team
at regular intervals since environments change quickly in the computer
world.
Conclusions
There is a thriving community of (nonmalicious) hackers who live the orig-
inal hacker ethic discussed above, and who deem it to be morally wrong to
maliciously hack into a system. They see themselves as the “real hackers” and
the modern-day element as the criminalization of the term. The dichotomy
is recognized, for example, in Stoll's topic, The Cuckoo's Egg (see [273]). At
the beginning of the topic, a colleague is quoted as saying: “Joe's a hacker of
the old school. A quick, capable programmer. Not one of those punks that
have tarnished the word 'hacker'.” (see [273, page 7]); and near the end of the
topic, Stoll recognizes the “golden age” of computing when he says ([273, page
371]): “I wish that I had lived in a golden age, where ethical behavior was
assumed; where technically competent programmers respected the privacy of
others; where we didn't need locks on our computers.” Thus, as we started this
section, we conclude it: there are many meanings of the term “hacker”.
Now that we understand the various nuances, we can bring the entire field
of vision on this topicinto focus.
10.20 The movie, Sneakers , starring Robert Redford is an entertaining look at this phenomenon.