| Main Entry: | cracker |
| Part of Speech: | n |
| Definition: | See Christmas cracker |
Copyright © 2007 Lexico Publishing Group, LLC
[krak-er] Pronunciation Key | 1. | a thin, crisp biscuit. |
| 2. | a firecracker. |
| 3. | Also called cracker bonbon. a small paper roll used as a party favor, that usually contains candy, trinkets, etc., and that pops when pulled sharply at one or both ends. |
| 4. | (initial capital letter) Sometimes Disparaging and Offensive. a native or inhabitant of Georgia (used as a nickname). |
| 5. | Slang: Disparaging and Offensive. a poor white person living in some rural parts of the southeastern U.S. |
| 6. | snapper (def. 5). |
| 7. | braggart; boaster. |
| 8. | a person or thing that cracks. |
| 9. | a chemical reactor used for cracking. Compare catalytic cracking, fractionator. |
| 10. | crackers, Informal. wild; crazy: They went crackers over the new styles. |
] Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2006.
| crack·er
(krāk'ər) Pronunciation Key
n.
|
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2006 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
cracker
"I should explain to your Lordship what is meant by crackers; a name they have got from being great boasters; they are a lawless set of rascalls on the frontiers of Virginia, Maryland, the Carolinas and Georgia, who often change their places of abode." [1766, G. Cochrane]
| cracker | |
noun | |
| 1. | a thin crisp wafer made of 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] |
| 5. | a party favor consisting of a paper roll (usually containing candy or a small favor) that pops when pulled at both ends |
cracker jargon
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.
[The Jargon File]
(1998-06-29)
Cracker
Crack"er\ (kr[a^]k"[~e]r), n. 1. One who, or that which, cracks. 2. A noisy boaster; a swaggering fellow. [Obs.] What cracker is this same that deafs our ears? --Shak. 3. A small firework, consisting of a little powder inclosed in a thick paper cylinder with a fuse, and exploding with a sharp noise; -- often called firecracker. 4. A thin, dry biscuit, often hard or crisp; as, a Boston cracker; a Graham cracker; a soda cracker; an oyster cracker. 5. A nickname to designate a poor white in some parts of the Southern United States. --Bartlett. 6. (Zo["o]l.) The pintail duck. 7. pl. (Mach.) A pair of fluted rolls for grinding caoutchouc. --Knight.
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