This is systems security for the Central Intelligence Agency. We would like to know why you are attempting to hack one of our classified databases.

Hacking is the clever circumvention of imposed limits, whether imposed by your government, your IP server, your own personality, or the laws of physics.

I won’t say it’s impossible, my lord, but I will say that it’s so close to impossible as to be inconceivable.

Tell me, what's the first thing a hacker does once he breaks into a system?"
"I don't know," Quentin said. "He steals a bunch of credit card numbers and subscribes to a lot of really premium porn sites?"
"He sets up a back door." It was good to know that even having attained enlightenment Penny was still impervious to humor. "So that if he's ever locked out, he can get back in.

You're telling me you can hack into an FBI agent's phone?
"Only when they're dumb enough to use their personal one instead of a secure line. Swear to Steve Jobs, whoever invented working from home should get a big wet kiss on the mouth."

As far as the allegations of the CIA hacking into Senate computers, nothing could be further from the truth, ... We wouldn’t do that. I mean, that’s just beyond the, you know, the scope of reason in terms of what we do.

An unbreakable code is a mathematical impossibility! He knows that!

"It is most unlikely. But — here comes the big "but" — not impossible."

Few persons can be made to believe that it is not quite an easy thing to invent a method of secret writing which shall baffle investigation. Yet it may be roundly asserted that human ingenuity cannot concoct a cipher which human ingenuity cannot resolve.

"Ford carried on counting quietly. This is about the most aggressive thing you can do to a computer, the equivalent of going up to a human being and saying "Blood...blood...blood...blood...

A hacker is someone who enjoys playful cleverness — not necessarily with computers. The programmers in the old MIT free software community of the 60s and 70s referred to themselves as hackers. Around 1980, journalists who discovered the hacker community mistakenly took the term to mean “security breaker.”

Difficult do you call it, Sir? I wish it were impossible. [on hearing a famous violinist]

I mean, look, I just broke into your private files. If I were you, I'd be more than a little upset."
Pen crinkled. "I'm not. It shows initiative.

In 1971 when I joined the staff of the MIT Artificial Intelligence lab, all of us who helped develop the operating system software, we called ourselves hackers. We were not breaking any laws, at least not in doing the hacking we were paid to do. We were developing software and we were having fun. Hacking refers to the spirit of fun in which we were developing software. The hacker ethic refers to the feelings of right and wrong, to the ethical ideas this community of people had — that knowledge should be shared with other people who can benefit from it, and that important resources should be utilized rather than wasted. Back in those days computers were quite scarce, and one thing about our computer was it would execute about a third-of-a-million instructions every second, and it would do so whether there was any need to do so or not. If no one used these instructions, they would be wasted. So to have an administrator say, "well you people can use a computer and all the rest of you can't," means that if none of those officially authorized people wanted to use the machine that second, it would go to waste. For many hours every morning it would mostly go to waste. So we decided that was a shame. Anyone should be able to use it who could make use of it, rather than just throwing it away. In general we did not tolerate bureaucratic obstructionism. We felt, "this computer is here, it was bought by the public, it is here to advance human knowledge and do whatever is constructive and useful." So we felt it was better to let anyone at all use it — to learn about programming, or do any other kind of work other than commercial activity.