pratiknaik said:
And so do I. A brief history lesson...
Originally a hacker was someone who hacked. That meaning, to get something done not necessarily in the most conventional way. People who did this with computers were called computer hackers. A cracker was what Americans called a biscuit.
By ~1980, through ignorance, fear, and media sensationalisms the average American had been convinced that anyone who hacked computers was an evil misfit bent on world domination. The name was shortened to โhackerโ and has stuck (with the negative connotation) ever since. There was, in fact a small group of hackers who did the sorts of things portrayed in the media. Some of the โgoodโ hackers may try to deny it but it's pretty obvious that the โbadโ hackers commandeered the word โhackerโ, or at least that the media did it on their behalf.
Coincidently around this time a new niche of computer hacking was developing to counter a growing technology known a copy protection. These hackers were not deemed worth being being called hackers and so were called crackers. This has also persisted till now. Most Americans were unaware of this and continued to use the word cracker strictly to refer to biscuits.
Then, towards then end of the 80's there was another hack. Not a computer hack, a newspaper kind. He decided that since all the good stories about hackers had been done he would make on up. He did a few minutes of research and the best he could come up with was to invent this pedantic hacker/cracker thing. Until then it never existed. It would not exist today were it not for some peoples insatiable desire to believe anything they read.
hotrod12 said:
Ha the day hacking is legal is the day that every website on the internet provides their admin password on their homepage. It's not happening anyday soon.
Hacking, in any way you define it is legal in many situations. Every time a client forgets their password I hack to recover it or otherwise gain access to their machine/data. Every time I'm asked to a a security audit on a system/network what I do could be described as nothing but hacking. This is basically what they OP is asking for. You can do this legally nearly any way possible in any country that does not have a law called the DMCA.
Midano said:
How do we know it's YOUR site on the first place?
You would probably start by contacting him as instructed at the start of the thread. A little due diligence should be done here, but since he apparently has control of the name and mail server It's a pretty good bet he's legit.
