A Network at War 

The situation today is radically different from the one 10 years ago. Over that period of time, these two groups of people have faced off and crystallized into opposing teams. The network is now at war and these are the soldiers. Crackers fight furiously for recognition and often realize it through spectacular feats of technical prowess. A month cannot go by 
  
without a newspaper article about some site that has been cracked. Equally, hackers work hard to develop new methods of security to ward off the cracker hordes. Who will ultimately prevail? It is too early to tell. The struggle will likely continue for another decade or more. The crackers may be losing ground, though. Because big business has invaded the Net, the demand for proprietary security tools has increased dramatically. This influx of corporate money will lead to an increase in the quality of such security tools. Moreover, the proliferation of these tools will happen at a much faster rate and for a variety of platforms. Crackers will be faced with greater and greater challenges as time goes on. However, as I explain in Chapter 5, "Is Security a Futile Endeavor?" the balance of knowledge maintains a constant, with crackers only inches behind. Some writers assert that throughout this process, a form of hacker evolution is occurring. By this they mean that crackers will ultimately be weeded out over the long haul (many will go to jail, many will grow older and wiser, and so forth). This is probably unrealistic. The exclusivity associated with being a cracker is a strong lure to up-and-coming teenagers. There is a mystique surrounding the activities of a cracker. There is ample evidence, however, that most crackers eventually retire. They later crop up in various positions, including system administrator jobs. One formerly renowned cracker today runs an Internet salon. Another works on systems for an airline company in Florida. Still another is an elected official in a small town in Southern California. (Because all these individuals have left the life for a more conservative and sane existence, I elected not to mention their names here.)