are people just that bored?

[3000dark]

bad hackers are called crackers they destory everything for no reason and crackers have given hackers a bad name

[The Cheat]

The thing is that phpBB is open source. So it's a bit easier to find the holes in it. All they have to do is open the php files, read them, and figure out what to do. Any php coder can really do that (it's called reverse engineering, a lot of places do this to beat their competitors, but they would never crack).

The good thing is that since it's open source, making the patches are easy. Only one person (it doesn't even have to be a person on the developing team) has to spot the problem. Then s/he can open up the php files necessary to patch it, fix it, and redistribute.

The other option is that a person can find the problem and just tell everyone how to fix it. I've seen this done more than the first option, which is a bit weird.....

[Roberdin]

The Linux Kernel has something like one tenth of the bugs than a program of its size would usually have thanks to its open-source model.

[clearsky]

hello all

[Skuld]

hello all

Hi there clearsky!

[Amorya]

ya, I doubt that would happen. I was browsing the vbulletin board the othr day, and did a search for phpBB to see if people their trash it(since so many people come to phpBB.com to trash it for some reason ), and was pleasently suprised to see that the staff their actually reacts to stop people from posting bad things about phpBB.

That's cool. I never really got on with the vB community (I do have a paid license for it... somewhere... but never got round to using it), but it's nice to see they don't spread FUD.


Amorya

[grrrlromeo]

do note not all hackers are bad, white hackers are good. ( they look for exploits and other things and then notify it about it )

and bad hackers are mostly the persons who are lonely and dont have many friends. overall sad

Uhm...a hacker could look for exploits if that was their area of expertise. But the term hacker is just a general term for people who are experts at something.

It's like...the cubby holes keep gettin' smaller. whoa.

[SamG]

To be fair, I think it's been a long time since the term "hacker" was widely used to refer to someone who tinkers with computer code for the common good. I personally think it's sad that the bad guys just about have sole ownership of the term, but it seems to be so.