Cracker definition

Cracker





Home | Index


We love those sites:

5 definitions found

From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:

  Cracker \Crack"er\ (kr[a^]k"[~e]r), n.
     1. One who, or that which, cracks.
        [1913 Webster]
  
     2. A noisy boaster; a swaggering fellow. [Obs.]
        [1913 Webster]


  
              What cracker is this same that deafs our ears?
                                                    --Shak.
        [1913 Webster]
  
     3. A small firework, consisting of a little powder inclosed
        in a thick paper cylinder with a fuse, and exploding with
        a sharp noise; -- usually called {firecracker}.
        [1913 Webster]
  
     4. A thin, dry biscuit, often hard or crisp; as, a Boston
        cracker; a Graham cracker; a soda cracker; an oyster
        cracker.
        [1913 Webster]
  
     5. A nickname to designate a poor white in some parts of the
        Southern United States. --Bartlett.
        [1913 Webster]
  
     6. (Zool.) The pintail duck.
        [1913 Webster]
  
     7. pl. (Mach.) A pair of fluted rolls for grinding
        caoutchouc. --Knight.
        [1913 Webster]

From WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]:

  cracker
       n 1: a thin crisp wafer made or flour and water with or without
            leavening and shortening; unsweetened or semisweet
       2: a poor white person in the southern United States [syn: {redneck}]
       3: a programmer who `cracks' (gains unauthorized access to)
          computers, typically to do malicious things; "crackers are
          often mistakenly called hackers"
       4: firework consisting of a small explosive charge and fuse in
          a heavy paper casing [syn: {firecracker}, {banger}]
       5: a party favor consisting of a paper roll (usually containing
          candy or a small favor) that pops when pulled at both ends
          [syn: {snapper}, {cracker bonbon}]

From Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0 [moby-thes]:

  60 Moby Thesaurus words for "cracker":
     Brussels biscuit, Klaxon, Melba toast, backwoodsman, biscuit,
     boiler factory, boiler room, bone, briar-hopper, brush ape,
     bull-roarer, bushman, catcall, cherry bomb, clack, clacker,
     clam digger, clapper, cricket, desert rat, dust, firecracker,
     forester, frontiersman, graham cracker, hardtack, hillbilly,
     hinterlander, horn, mountain man, mountaineer, mummy, noisemaker,
     parchment, pilot biscuit, piny, pretzel, rattle, rattlebox,
     redneck, ridge runner, rusk, saltine, sea biscuit, ship biscuit,
     sinker, siren, snapper, soda cracker, steam whistle, stick,
     ticktack, wafer, whistle, whizgig, whizzer, woodlander, woodman,
     woodsman, zwieback
  
  

From Jargon File (4.3.1, 29 Jun 2001) [jargon]:

  cracker n. One who breaks security on a system. Coined ca. 1985 by
     hackers in defense against journalistic misuse of {hacker} (q.v., sense
     8). An earlier attempt to establish `worm' in this sense around 1981-82
     on Usenet was largely a failure.
  
     Use of both these neologisms reflects a strong revulsion against the
     theft and vandalism perpetrated by cracking rings. The neologism
     "cracker" in this sense may have been influenced not so much by the term
     "safe-cracker" as by the non-jargon term "cracker", which in Middle
     English meant an obnoxious person (e.g., "What cracker is this same that
     deafs our ears / With this abundance of superfluous breath?" -
     Shakespeare's King John, Act II, Scene I) and in modern colloquial
     American English survives as a barely gentler synonym for "white trash".
  
     While it is expected that any real hacker will have done some playful
     cracking and knows many of the basic techniques, anyone past {larval
     stage} is expected to have outgrown the desire to do so except for
     immediate, benign, practical reasons (for example, if it's necessary to
     get around some security in order to get some work done).
  
     Thus, there is far less overlap between hackerdom and crackerdom than
     the {mundane} reader misled by sensationalistic journalism might expect.
     Crackers tend to gather in small, tight-knit, very secretive groups that
     have little overlap with the huge, open poly-culture this lexicon
     describes; though crackers often like to describe _themselves_ as
     hackers, most true hackers consider them a separate and lower form of
     life.
  
     Ethical considerations aside, hackers figure that anyone who can't
     imagine a more interesting way to play with their computers than
     breaking into someone else's has to be pretty {losing}. Some other
     reasons crackers are looked down on are discussed in the entries on
     {cracking} and {phreaking}. See also {samurai}, {dark-side hacker}, and
     {hacker ethic}. For a portrait of the typical teenage cracker, see
     {warez d00dz}.
  
  

From The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (27 SEP 03) [foldoc]:

  cracker
       
           An individual who attempts to gain unauthorised
          access to a computer system.  These individuals are often
          malicious and have many means at their disposal for breaking
          into a system.  The term was coined ca. 1985 by hackers in
          defence against journalistic misuse of "{hacker}".  An earlier
          attempt to establish "worm" in this sense around 1981--82 on
          {Usenet} was largely a failure.
       
          Use of both these neologisms reflects a strong revulsion
          against the theft and vandalism perpetrated by cracking rings.
          The neologism "cracker" in this sense may have been influenced
          not so much by the term "safe-cracker" as by the non-jargon
          term "cracker", which in Middle English meant an obnoxious
          person (e.g., "What cracker is this same that deafs our ears /
          With this abundance of superfluous breath?"  -- Shakespeare's
          King John, Act II, Scene I) and in modern colloquial American
          English survives as a barely gentler synonym for "white
          trash".
       
          While it is expected that any real hacker will have done some
          playful cracking and knows many of the basic techniques,
          anyone past {larval stage} is expected to have outgrown the
          desire to do so except for immediate practical reasons (for
          example, if it's necessary to get around some security in
          order to get some work done).
       
          Contrary to widespread myth, cracking does not usually involve
          some mysterious leap of hackerly brilliance, but rather
          persistence and the dogged repetition of a handful of fairly
          well-known tricks that exploit common weaknesses in the
          security of target systems.  Accordingly, most crackers are
          only mediocre hackers.
       
          Thus, there is far less overlap between hackerdom and
          crackerdom than the {mundane} reader misled by
          sensationalistic journalism might expect.  Crackers tend to
          gather in small, tight-knit, very secretive groups that have
          little overlap with the huge, open hacker poly-culture; though
          crackers often like to describe *themselves* as hackers, most
          true hackers consider them a separate and lower form of life,
          little better than {virus} writers.  Ethical considerations
          aside, hackers figure that anyone who can't imagine a more
          interesting way to play with their computers than breaking
          into someone else's has to be pretty {losing}.
       
          See also {Computer Emergency Response Team}, {dark-side
          hacker}, {hacker ethic}, {phreaking}, {samurai}, {Trojan
          Horse}.
       
          [{Jargon File}]
       
          (1998-06-29)
       
       

















Powered by Blog Dictionary [BlogDict]
Kindly supported by Vaffle Invitation Code Get a Freelance Job - Outsource Your Projects | Threadless Coupon
All rights reserved. (2008-2024)