The following sections will help you to analyze a web site for these integration
hooks.
UNIDERSTANDING THE TERMINOLOGY
You want to be careful to distinguish different uses of the term hacking. When I say you want a site to be
hackable, I don??™t mean people should easily be able to break the security elements of the web site. Such activity
isn??™t hacking??”that??™s cracking. When you design a site to be hackable, you are designing it to be extensible,
even in what you hope to be highly transformative ways. See Eric Raymond??™s Jargon File web site for a relevant
definition of a hacker (http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/H/hacker.html), especially the
following:
??? ???A person who enjoys exploring the details of programmable systems and how to stretch their capabilities???
??? ???One who enjoys the intellectual challenge of creatively overcoming or circumventing limitations???
Note the deprecated usage: ???A malicious meddler who tries to discover sensitive information by poking
around. Hence password hacker, network hacker. The correct term for this sense is cracker.???
Some people are talking about ???designing for hackability??? (http://www.brianoberkirch.com/
2007/04/03/designing-for-hackability/).
I??™m using the term reverse engineeringto refer to a careful study of a web site, its functionality, and
how it??™s put together. I outline some techniques, but there are more to use.
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