Good, Bad, and Ugly

North Korea hacker threat grows as cyber unit grows: defector

Lockheed’s cyber cops sift through hacker evidence

Hackers hit Sony sites raising more security issues

Sony defends response time to hacker breach

Could you please help retrain all journalists around the globe in the correct terminology for computer criminals?

The whole notion that a “hacker” is a bad person was created by your very own news industry and not by anyone else, so could you please rectify this?

No one else is in a position to fix the mistake that the news industry has created.

This is one of many links you may find informative: http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/H/hacker.html

Zintrigue

This battle to save the h-word has been going on for years, and I’m afraid it appears to be a lost cause.

It’s just the way our evolving language works. Sometimes a perfectly good word changes meaning over time, and this is one of those instances.

If you look up hacker in dictionary.com you will find: A microcomputer user who attempts to gain unauthorized access to proprietary computer systems.

And the Associated Press Stylebook says: “In common usage, the term has evolved to mean one who uses computer skills to unlawfully penetrate proprietary computer systems.”

I don’t think any amount of retraining “all journalists around the globe” is going to restore the word’s original meaning: GBU Editor

A Sony Playstation console is displayed at an electronics shop in Tokyo May 7, 2011. Sony said on Saturday it had removed from the Internet the names and partial addresses of 2,500 sweepstakes contestants that had been stolen by hackers and posted on a website, and said it did not know when it could restart its PlayStation video games network.  REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon

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