The word “hacker” is often misconstrued to be a bad thing, though that’s not always accurate. That was the message delivered by security researcher Joe Grand at the SecTOR security conference today here in Toronto. Grand is also known as the Kingpin and was formerly one of the founding members of the L0pht hacker collective in the 1990s.
“I want to share the experience of being a hacker in the corporate environment,” Grand told the audience. “My idealistic view of hacker is someone that is always asking questions, learning and has a thirst for knowledge. A hacker tries things that other people think are impossible and it’s someone that solves problems in a clever way.”
Grand noted that the media likes to co-op the term hacker for malicious people and those that attack websites. Grand does not include those type of people in his definition of hacker.’
“Sharing information is what hackers want to do; to share, teach and learn,” Grand said.