Hackers Quotes

The Hacker Ethic: Access to computers
and anything which might teach you something about the way the world works
should be unlimited and total.
Always yield to the Hands-On Imperative!
All information should be free.
Mistrust authority
promote decentralization.
Hackers should be judged by their hacking, not bogus criteria such as degrees, age, race, or position.
You can create art and beauty on a computer.
Computers can change your life for the better. ~ Steven Levy

Are hackers a threat? The degree of threat presented by any conduct, whether legal or illegal, depends on the actions and intent of the individual and the harm they cause. ~ Kevin Mitnick

Hackers are becoming more sophisticated in conjuring up new ways to hijack your system by exploiting technical vulnerabilities or human nature. Don't become the next victim of unscrupulous cyberspace intruders. ~ Kevin Mitnick

it is quite disturbing to know that anyone can look at what we are doing online at any given moment. There are millions and millions of other people using the internet who choose not to take special precautions. Without taking the extra step to protect your online activities, anyone from the NSA, FBI, and general hackers can see what you search while on the internet. One ~ Evan Lane

U.S. computer networks and databases are under daily cyber attack by nation states, international crime organizations, subnational groups, and individual hackers. ~ John O. Brennan

While the vast majority of hackers may be disinclined towards violence, it would only take a few to turn cyber terrorism into reality. ~ Dorothy Denning

To hackers, a program was an organic entity that had a life independent from that of its author. ~ Steven Levy

If I compared myself to my kids, they know everything, and they're like small little hackers. I feel also that my identity can be stolen; I'm very paranoid about it compared to other people in the younger generation. ~ Michael Nyqvist

Dear 2600: I think my girlfriend has been cheating on me and I wanted to know if I could get her password to Hotmail and AOL. I am so desperate to find out. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.
And this is yet another popular category of letter we get. You say any help would be appreciated? Let's find out if thats true. Do you think someone who is cheating on you might also be capable of having a mailbox you don't know about? Do you think that even if you could get into the mailbox she uses that she would be discussing her deception there, especially if we live in a world where Hotmail and AOL passwords are so easily obtained? Finally, would you feel better if you invaded her privacy and found out that she was being totally honest with you? Whatever problems are going on in this relationship are not going to be solved with subterfuge. If you can't communicate openly, there's not much there to salvage. ~ Emmanuel Goldstein

Growth hackers resist this temptation (or, more appropriate, this delusion). They opt, deliberately, to attract only the early adopters who make or break new tech services and seek to do it as cheaply as possible. In fact, part of the reason the scrappy start-ups, services, and apps in this book might not always be well-known or topics of daily conversation is because their founders have focused their energies on product development with an eye toward growth - they're now millions of members strong without any superfluous "buzz." They got to mass market by ignoring the urge to appeal to the mass market, at least to start with. ~ Ryan Holiday

Everything about Mark Zuckerberg is pure hacker. Hackers don't take realities of the world for granted; they seek to break and rebuild what they don't like. They seek to outsmart the world. ~ Sarah Lacy

If you give a hacker a new toy, the first thing he'll do is take it apart to figure out how it works. ~ Jamie Zawinski

I have a G4 at home. Theyre great machines for individual users, and I even know a few core Linux hackers who are having a lot of fun with them. But if you want to move the needle on the non-Microsoft desktop, youve got to look elsewhere. ~ Nat Friedman

No one messes around with a nerd's computer and escapes unscathed. ~ E.A. Bucchianeri

The only thing that matters in this game is the score, something hackers never quite understand, even when they think they do. If you can't make a shot eighty percent of the time and there's a penalty if you don't, you shouldn't try it. Ever. No matter where you are. ~ James Patterson

God is a hacker, not an engineer ~ Francis Crick

There are more hackers breeding every day, and more brilliant minds are turning into hackers. Security has advanced, but so have hackers. ~ Michael Demon Calce

To guys like Mark, time was another weapon of the establishment, like alphabetical order. The great engineers, hackers - they didn't function under the same time constraints as everyone else. ~ Ben Mezrich

If hackers, if anyone committing a criminal act, wants to reduce their risk, they obviously don't involve anybody else. The greater the circle of people that know what you're doing, the higher the risk. ~ Kevin Mitnick

I've never really been associated with the hackers very much. I am sympathetic to them. I understand how their mind works. It's like a child that is born and wants to explore every little - open up every little drawer there is and find out how the world works. ~ Steve Wozniak

Homo Sapiens are Exploitable. Large Corporations Base the Mass with Least Recognition. It does NOT have to be the Employee Himself that would Deteriorate the Corporations Intranet but Surely since his Least Recognized, He is Most Definitely Vulnerable, Its a Starting Point to Open a Door for a Lovely Challenging Maze filled with Seed of Corruption that in Stages the Artists Shall Paint their Mark. ~ Emmanuel Abou-chabke

The openness on which Apple had built its original empire had been completely reversed - but the spirit was still there among users. Hackers vied to 'jailbreak' the iPhone, running new apps on it despite Apple's desire to keep it closed. ~ Jonathan Zittrain

A hacker to me is someone creative who does wonderful things. ~ Tim Berners-Lee

Dear 2600: Tell me how much one of your hackers would charge me to delete my criminal record from the Texas police database.
[NAME DELETED] Well, we would start with erasing your latest crime, that of soliciting a minor to commit another crime. (Your request was read by a small child here in the office.) After you're all paid up on that, we will send out the bill for hiding your identity by not printing your real name, which you sent us like the meathead you apparently are. After that's all sorted, we can assemble our team of hackers, who sit around the office waiting for such lucrative opportunities as this to come along, and figure out even more ways to shake you down. It's what we do, after all. Just ask Fox News. ~ Emmanuel Goldstein

As a matter of fact, yeah, they were foolproof. The problem is that you don't have to protect yourself against fools. You have to protect yourself against people like me. ~ Jeffery Deaver

Never send a boy to do a woman's job, Irma. - Payton Kendall ~ Julie James

Hacking is a talent. You won't learn it at school. It's like being Messi or C.Ronaldo. If you were born to become a Hacker, it's your destiny. Otherwise, you'll be Hacked. ~ Amine Essiraj

Well, take the evolution of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. It began as hackers' rights. Then it became general civil liberties of everybody - government stay away. ~ Esther Dyson

I'm not on my way anywhere, Harry sometimes tells inquirers. How to explain, in a culture frantic for resolution, that sometimes the shit stays messy? I do not want the female gender that has been assigned to me at birth. Neither do I want the male gender that transsexual medicine can furnish and that the state will award me if I behave in the right way. I don't want any of it. How to explain that for some, or for some at some times, this irresolution is OK - desirable, even (e.g., "gender hackers") - whereas for others, or for others at some times, it stays a source of conflict or grief? ~ Maggie Nelson

I met a lot of hackers, and some of them were very arrogant. They thought I was stupid because I couldn't follow what they were talking about. But then I met this great guy whom companies hire to find their security holes, and he was very good about explaining so I could understand. ~ David Lagercrantz

Wicked Tribe, Rooling Tribe! is the mejor hacker tribe. Too small, too fast, too scientific! ~ Tad Williams

It might seem that security should gradually improve over time as security problems are discovered and corrected, but unfortunately this does not seem to be the case. System software is growing ever more complicated, hackers are becoming better and better organized, and computers are connecting more and more intimately on the Internet. Security is an ongoing battle that can never really be won. ~ Evi Nemeth

Those in authority tend to be annoyed by hackers' general attitude of disobedience. But that disobedience is a byproduct of the qualities that make them good programmers. ~ Paul Graham

Of all the things I've lost, I miss my mind the most. ~ Mark Twain

Hackers, makers, programmers, engineers, nerds, techies - what we'll call "geeks" for the rest of the book (deal with it) - we're a creative lot who don't like to be told what to do. ~ Jeff Potter

Andrew Hacker argues that algebra and trigonometry and calculus are subjects that almost nobody used after they graduate, and so why should we continue to compel students to try to pass them? ~ Anya Kamenetz

Computer hacking was like a chemical bond holding us all together. ~ Rachel Zhang

Mario's high spirits soon took a somber turn. He rolled himself closer to Frank. "I need this job, but you were right. More than a job, I need a way out."
Frank had him. He was about to detour the rest of Mario's life. Build a team, deploy them, scoop up the data, get the hell out of town. Frank had left an unhappy trail of ruined technicians. Spies do that kind of shit, were his usual parting words. ~ Michael Ben Zehabe

The hacker mindset doesn't actually see what happens on the other side, to the victim. ~ Kevin Mitnick

Service disruptions have to be avoided or at least resolved as quickly as possible. When the Internet goes down, consumers don't notice the difference between a technical malfunction, an act of sabotage by hackers or a military attack. ~ Thomas De Maiziere

The smartest hackers understand that their skill at hacking technology may be less important than their skill at hacking the digital marketplace. ~ Douglas Rushkoff

First they came for the hackers. But I never did anything illegal with my computer, so I didn't speak up. Then they came for the pornographers. But I thought there was too much smut on the Internet anyway, so I didn't speak up. Then they came for the anonymous remailers. But a lot of nasty stuff gets sent from anon.penet.fi, so I didn't speak up. Then they came for the encryption users. But I could never figure out how to work PGP anyway, so I didn't speak up. Then they came for me. And by that time there was no one left to speak up. WIDELY COPIED INTERNET APHORISM, A PARAPHRASE OF PROTESTANT MINISTER MARTIN NIEMOLLER'S STATEMENT ABOUT LIFE IN NAZI GERMANY ~ David Brin

We worried for decades about WMDs – Weapons of Mass Destruction. Now it is time to worry about a new kind of WMDs – Weapons of Mass Disruption. ~ John Mariotti

There are proxies, proxy servers on the internet, and this is very typical for hackers to use. They create what are called proxy chains where they gain access to a number of different systems around the world, sometimes by hacking these, and they use them as sort of relay boxes. ~ Edward Snowden

In the hacking world, security is more of a response than a proactive measure. They wait for hackers to attack and then they patch, based on the attacks. ~ Michael Demon Calce

Hackers in Hollywood movies are phenomenal; all they need to do is: "c:> hack into fbi ~ Various

For countries such as Kenya to emerge as economic powerhouses, they need better infrastructure: roads, ports, smart grids and power plants. Infrastructure is expensive, and takes a long time to build. In the meantime, hackers are building 'grassroots infrastructure,' using the mobile-phone system to build solutions that are ready for market. ~ Ethan Zuckerman

Hiro and Y.T. have eaten a lot of junk food together in different joints all
over L.A. -- doughnuts, burritos, pizza, sushi, you name it -- and all Y.T. ever
talks about is her mother and the terrible job that she has with the Feds. The
regimentation. The lie-detector tests. The fact that for all the work she
does, she really has no idea what it is that the government is really working
on.
It's always been a mystery to Hiro, too, but then, that's how the government is.
It was invented to do stuff that private enterprise doesn't bother with, which
means that there's probably no reason for it; you never know what they're doing
or why. Hackers have traditionally looked upon the government's coding
sweatshops with horror and just tried to forget that all of that shit ever
existed.
But they have thousands of programmers. The programmers work twelve hours a day
out of some twisted sense of personal loyalty. Their software-engineering
techniques, while cruel and ugly, are very sophisticated. They must have been
up to something. ~ Neal Stephenson

An element of virtually every national security threat and crime problem the FBI faces is cyber-based or facilitated. We face sophisticated cyber threats from state-sponsored hackers, hackers for hire, organized cyber syndicates, and terrorists. ~ James Comey

Why do they believe that?" "Because we are hackers," Csongor said, "and they have seen movies. ~ Neal Stephenson

She noted the lack of female hardware hackers, and was enraged at the male hacker obsession with technological play and power. ~ Steven Levy

I am well aware of the facts presented by numerous security experts on the many ways in which the United States' digital networks have come under siege by cybercriminals and under daily assault by hackers in league with various foreign governments. ~ Rebecca MacKinnon

Artificial Intelligence trend is fuzzing up in Cybersecurity

If weaponized for Cyber-attacks, it becomes as evil-infinity". ~ Arulselvar Thomas - Briskinfosec

Dear 2600: ... So, in the interest of information gathering and because I am a subscriber, are you going to be checking me out?
This would be unnecessary since we checked you out before you subscribed. That's why we made sure you heard about us and followed the plan by subscribing. Writing this letter, however, was not part of the plan and we will be taking corrective action. ~ Emmanuel Goldstein

I talked to the general counsel of the DNC, and he assures me that every step along the way, when we were notified of these issues, that we changed systems, changed procedures, but these hackers are so sophisticated that they changed procedures. ~ Donna Brazile

Wait, Ed. Did you say she?" "You better believe it. Our hacker's a she! ~ David Lagercrantz

So... what was the reason to don't be social!???
...
Oh, thanks Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution for reminding me. ~ Deyth Banger

Theology is an attempt to hack god's mind and look at the universe as he does; god's firewalls are so strong no attempt has ever been successful. ~ Bangambiki Habyarimana

A smartphone links patients' bodies and doctors' computers, which in turn are connected to the Internet, which in turn is connected to any smartphone anywhere. The new devices could put the management of an individual's internal organs in the hands of every hacker, online scammer, and digital vandal on Earth. ~ Charles C. Mann

Yeah, young coders abound, but mostly only string together preassembled digital beads, and even today's brightest young nerdlets aren't immune to eventual wrinkles. As for real experts, well, as the dawn of the computer age recedes, so too have the hairlines of your true computer wizards, the males I mean. We females never change, we are eternally young. ~ Rajnar Vajra

There are few sources of energy so powerful as a procrastinating college student. ~ Paul Graham

Because to hackers, passwords were even more odious than locked doors. ~ Steven Levy

Out in the field, any connection with home just makes you weaker. It reminds you that you were once civilized, soft; and that can get you killed faster than a bullet through the head. ~ Henry Mosquera

Computer hackers are the true journalists in the 21st Century. The old journalism is worse than dead. It is unreliable to the point that it is nothing more than a nuisance, an obstacle in the pursuit of truth. ~ A.E. Samaan

Central tenets of the Hacker Ethic: the free flow of information, particularly information that helped fellow hackers understand, explore, and build systems. ~ Steven Levy

Coding and technical chops are now an essential part of being a great marketer. Growth hackers are a hybrid of marketer and coder ... ~ Ryan Holiday

Most hackers graduate from Unix and Linux platforms. They know them intimately. They don't try to exploit them ~ Dean Stockwell

Dear 2600: Please help me to learn how to become an elite one day.
The first thing to learn is never to use the word elite as a noun. In fact, don't even use it as an adjective. It's radically lame. ~ Emmanuel Goldstein

A lot of hackers set up scam sites. They can impersonate a site like PayPal, for instance. ~ Michael Demon Calce

Everyone wants to be called an outsider so I'm a proud insider. If I was young I'd be in my parents' house shutting down the government on my computer. The new delinquent is the hacker. ~ John Waters

the hackers realizes which one is which. As a political statement, the hacker changes the amount of fluoride flowing into the drinking water. He plans to do this for only a few minutes. Almost immediately, lightning strikes a phone pedestal a mile down the road. The DSL line the hacker is using "goes dark". Panic finds its way across the hacker's face as he realizes he just murdered over a thousand people with fluoride poisoning. ~ Jeremy Martin

The Hacker Way is an approach to building that involves continuous improvement and iteration. Hackers believe that something can always be better, and that nothing is ever complete. ~ Mark Zuckerberg

Hackers are nerdy, pasty, tubby, little geeks with triple thick glasses and this is probably a demented otaku with smelly feet. So catching him will be a breeze! ~ Keiko Nobumoto

See, unlike most hackers, I get little joy out of figuring out how to install the latest toy. ~ Jamie Zawinski

There are no hackers, there are only spies. Hacking is nothing more than the natural evolution of espionage. ~ Eric O'Neill

A company can spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on firewalls, intrusion detection systems and encryption and other security technologies, but if an attacker can call one trusted person within the company, and that person complies, and if the attacker gets in, then all that money spent on technology is essentially wasted. ~ Kevin Mitnick

The key to social engineering is influencing a person to do something that allows the hacker to gain access to information or your network. ~ Kevin Mitnick

It's less about technology for me, and more about religion. [on hacking] ~ Adrian Lamo

I'm a hacker, but I'm the good kind of hackers. And I've never been a criminal. ~ Mikko Hypponen

Never underestimate the determination of a kid who is time-rich and cash-poor. ~ Cory Doctorow

Hackers are seen as shadowy figures with superhuman powers that threaten civilization. ~ Mitch Kapor

Some companies like Airbnb and Instragram spend a long time trying new iterations until they achieve what growth hackers call Product Market Fit (PMF); ~ Ryan Holiday

Celebrities, make it harder for hackers to get nude pics of you from your computer by not putting nude pics of yourself on the computer. ~ Ricky Gervais

When you choose a language, youre also choosing a community. The programmers youll be able to hire to work on a Java project wont be as smart as the ones you could get to work on a project written in Python. And the quality of your hackers probably matters more than the language you choose. Though, frankly, the fact that good hackers prefer Python to Java should tell you something about the relative merits of those languages. ~ Philip Greenspun

Where there's a will, there's a way. Hackers tend to find a way. Code is also expanding. More lines of code means more probability that there is an exploit that can be [used]. ~ Michael Demon Calce

I seem to be getting a lot of things pushed my way that are strong women. It's like people see Hackers and they send me offers to play tough women with guns, the kind who wear no bra and a little tank top. I'd like to play strong women who are also very feminine. ~ Angelina Jolie

Growth hackers are a hybrid of marketer and coder, one who looks at the traditional question of "How do I get customers for my product?" and answers with A/B tests, landing pages, viral factor, email deliverability, and Open Graph. . . . ~ Ryan Holiday

Narcissistic Supply

You get discarded as supply for one of two reason: They find you too outspoken about their abuse. They prefer someone that will keep stroking their ego and remain their silent doormat. Or, they found new narcissistic supply. Either way, you can count on the fact that they planned your devaluation phase and smear campaign in advance, so they could get one more ego stroke with your reaction. Narcissists are angry, spiteful takers that don't have empathy, remorse or conscience. They are incapable of unconditional love. Love to them is giving only when it serves them. They gaslight their victims by minimizing the trauma they have caused by blaming others or stating you are too sensitive. They never feel responsible or will admit to what they did to you. They have disordered thinking that is concerned with their needs and ego. It is not uncommon for them to hack their targets, in order to gain information about them. They enjoy mind games and control. This is their dopamine high. The sooner you distance yourself the healthier you will become. Narcissism can't be cured or prayed away. It is a mental disorder that turns the victims of its abuse into mental patients because it causes so much psychological manipulation. ~ Shannon L. Alder

In personal conversations with technical people, I call myself a hacker. But when I'm talking to journalists I just say "programmer" or something like that. ~ Linus Torvalds

The intent of the individuals who created the DDoS attacks has nothing to do with hacking, and they are vandals, not hackers. ~ Kevin Mitnick

The hackers who hacked into Sony have leaked the upcoming script for the new James Bond movie. Some of the executives said the news left them shaken but not stirred. ~ Conan O'Brien

I love being a businessman much more than being a hacker. ~ Kim Dotcom

Hackers are breaking the systems for profit. Before, it was about intellectual curiosity and pursuit of knowledge and thrill, and now hacking is big business. ~ Kevin Mitnick

We hackers are a playful bunch; we'll hack anything, including language, if it looks like fun (thus our tropism for puns). Deep down, we like confusing people who are stuffier and less mentally agile than we are, especially when they're bosses. There's a little bit of the mad scientist in all hackers, ready to discombobulate the world and flip authority the finger - especially if we can do it with snazzy special effects. ~ Eric S. Raymond

A vulnerability in an organization's IoT microcosm is a "taunt" to exploit by malicious hackers ~ James Scott, Senior Fellow, Institute For Critical Infrastructure Technology

I think the thing that our government lacks - just about more than anything else - is technological competence. We have some of the greatest white-hat hackers in the world here in the U.S., but the government seems to be technologically illiterate. ~ John McAfee

In this business, I find more value in working with hackers who abstract new realities from cast aside code and concepts than academics who regurgitate other people's work and try to pawn it off as their own. ~ James Scott, Senior Fellow, Institute For Critical Infrastructure Technology

Be very careful. We suggest getting a book on HTML to avoid becoming a real legend in the hacker world. Putting up a web page before you know how to put up a web page is generally a very bad idea. The .gov sites are an exception. ~ Emmanuel Goldstein

To be a hacker - when I use the term - is somebody who is creative and does wonderful things. ~ Tim Berners-Lee

Almost every PC owner has lost a weekend sorting through the debris of worms, viruses, spyware, and broken permissions. Since Windows was originally created in the pre-Internet days, programmers didn't worry about closing holes in the operating system. Unfortunately, hackers and spammers could easily exploit these vulnerabilities. While security continues to improve with each new release, the Windows operating system is still based on a pre-Internet model, which is prone to viruses. Mac OS X was created only a few years ago with ultimate security and stability. There are no known Mac OS X viruses, and Windows Word Macros (a common home to threats) ~ Hunter Travis