A discrete malicious action of debilitating intent inflicted by one entity upon another. A threat might attack a critical infrastructure to destroy or incapacitate it. Computer Emergency Response Team at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh - Established in 1988, to help private industry and government deal with Internet security issues. Central Processing Unit - The brains of the computer, determines the speed and power of the system. A term used to describe a person who hacks into a computer system with malicious intent.
Crackers tend to be young and unskilled compared their hackers counterparts.
The term itself was created by hackers who wanted to differentiate themselves from those who just want to break into a secure system. The strength of an encryption key is defined by how many 1s and 0s, or bits, are used to define a key. Encryption is considered strong if it is difficult or impossible for a supercomputer to systematically go through the possible key combinations and guess the right key. A very skilled computer enthusiast who breaks into computer networks to learn about the network and its programming language. One who breaks into a computer network.