Social Culture of Hackers

Hacking is seen as an underground group. They are very social in nature. No man is an island in the hacker or security community. Hackers share information very liberally. Sites spring up every day to share tools, techniques, news, and other information to fellow hackers and security professionals. Security professionals need to be embracing joining the hacker community not in order to use the techniques of crackers, but so the techniques are known and defenses can be developed.

A couple of well known hacker underground sites include:

Hackers Center Security: http://forums.hackerscenter.com/index.php, T
he Hacker Community: http://www.hacker.org/,
The 2600: http://www.2600.com/
Defcon: http://www.defcon.org/.

Most of the hacker community never meets face-to-face. They hang out on irc, chat sites, and IM.
The only time a person get together are at Defcon and Blackhat security conferences.

Mailing lists and RSS feeds are the lifeblood to the security professional. Within the mailing lists and RSS feeds information is delivered as soon as it is available. If you keep up with the research and
security holes within software packages then you are better able to defend against these weaknesses.

Its a fine line between a criminal cracker and a security professional. They both use the same tools and techniques to defend and attack a computer security system. They both run in the same hacker
community because they are both curious about technology and gadgets. The only way you can tell the difference is by their actions.

Hackers have big egos. They love to talk and in most instance they love to share their secrets. Hacking is not hard. You just have to know what you want to accomplish before you start the hack. You can go to forums and chat sites and discover all sorts of new techniques and procedures to hack.