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Saltine Cracker Award

🍘️🧂️🎖️ℹ️ Information about the Saltine Cracker Award for software cracking, and its recipients


General

General information about the award is provided below this line and above the recipients section.


Etymology

Saltine crackers are a type of cracker that this award is named after. It is a pun based on the type of cracker, and the term for computer cracking. Recipients generally aren't salty about what they did to receive the award. After you get this award, it is appropriate to celebrate by having at least 8 saltine crackers during the day (as in 8 bits in a byte) but this is not a requirement.


Who can receive this award?

This reward is purely for people who have cracked either software or software security. White hat, Græy hat, and Black hat hackers can receive this award. Computers themselves cannot receive the reward, but their developers can, only if they were involved directly in the cracking process.

The award can be given posthumously as well. The reward currently does not have a physical form.

To receive the reward, there must be at least 1 reliable source regarding the event of computer cracking. Wikipedia definition of computer cracking

Eric S. Raymond, author of The New Hacker's Dictionary, advocates that members of the computer underground should be called crackers. Yet, those people see themselves as hackers and even try to include the views of Raymond in what they see as a wider hacker culture, a view that Raymond has harshly rejected. Instead of a hacker/cracker dichotomy, they emphasize a spectrum of different categories, such as white hat, grey hat, black hat and script kiddie. In contrast to Raymond, they usually reserve the term cracker for more malicious activity.

According to Ralph D. Clifford, a cracker or cracking is to "gain unauthorized access to a computer in order to commit another crime such as destroying information contained in that system." These subgroups may also be defined by the legal status of their activities.

One reward is permitted for one act of cracking within a 24 hour period. The reward can stack if there are more reliable sources and more instances of cracking.


Legal information about the award

Black hat hackers can receive this award, even while under imprisonment. People who crack DRM systems in countries where DRM anti-circumvention laws exist will be given the same chance as those who aren't. The award cannot be used as a means of escaping imprisonment, unless a trial permits it.

The award itself is licensed under the GNU General Public License V3, or at the choice of the recipient, the Unlicense or WTFPL. It is not permitted for use in a Copyrighted license scheme such as MIT, BSD, or Apache, it is only available under Copyleft, as to keep it fair and prevent abuse.


Recipients

As of 2023, Friday, December 29th, no recipients have been chosen for this award. :octocat: Nominate a recipient


White hat

  1. See above

Græy hat

  1. See above

Black hat

  1. See above

File info

File version: 1 (2023, Friday, December 29th at 09:40 pm PST)