A computer against the language: the day that the RAE changed the meaning of 'hacker'

A computer against the language: the day that the RAE changed the meaning of 'hacker'

Chema Alonso had been fighting for this modification in the dictionary since 2014, which until now had defined him only as a "hacker". Now, she also says that she is the "expert in computer management and who deals with the security of systems"

    A hacker does not have to be bad, despite the fact that, for years, the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE) defined this term as "hacker". However, recently the institution has added a new definition. Something that Chema Alonso, current CDO (Chief Data Officer, Chief Data Manager) of Telefonica and one of the most recognized hackers in our country, has fought a lot. Alonso has granted an interview to this newspaper to explain the change.

The RAE has modified its hacker definition to include, as a second meaning, "the computer expert, who deals with the security of systems and developing improvement techniques." Something in which Chema Alonso has been involved since 2014.


    For years I have been advocating the inclusion of a definition of the hacker term different from that of a hacker , " he explains. This was the only meaning that the RAE included since it decided to incorporate the dictionary in 2014. The pirate is a criminal, the hacker is not.

- Why do not like the meaning of 'hacker'?

-Criminalizes the important work carried out by hackers, expert researchers who test technologies subjecting them to continuous technological challenges and that lead them to reach new limits in which their creators had not even thought about.

In addition, Alonso defends that these professionals "improve the technology we use and their security, something very good".

Therefore, he insists that defining a hacker as a pirate "equals the first with a cybercriminal", who is the one who uses third-party tools and techniques such as phishing to deceive their victims and cheat them by skipping legality and taking advantage of failures. of security of the different applications. "And precisely one of the tasks performed by hackers is that, detect those failures and cause them to be corrected by the owners of those applications or technologies."

Perhaps for that reason, and because hackers protect users, Chema Alonso admits that, nevertheless, the change introduced "is good news, although I would have liked a major change". In this sense, for this expert the ideal would have been that the RAE completely eliminated the meaning of "hacker". But, in any case, "I value positively that they have included a new meaning more in line with the changes I have been proposing for years, that of the hacker" as an expert in computer management, who deals with the security of systems and develop improvement techniques. "It's a definition very similar to the one that other dictionaries from other languages ​​have been collecting for years."

It should be noted that the RAE comes to include as a definition of hacker the idea that was most widespread at the social level at that time and that, moreover, was what was then included in the Pan-Hispanic Dictionary of Doubts. "Then my particular crusade began to get the change," recalls this expert. "I launched a campaign to collect signatures on Change.org to request change, in that petition I argued that effectively labeling the hacker as a" hacker "criminalized him when in reality what characterizes a hacker is his passion to search the limits of technologies and contribute to their improvement ".

Chema Alonso says that whenever he has had occasion he has denounced "what I considered was an unfair definition" by the largest institution that monitors the future of the Spanish language. "I think that something has been achieved during this time and that little by little the definition that I have been defending has begun to penetrate, also among the media." The fact that you have echoed the change is a very good sign that something has changed. started to change, "he says.

A hacker in the RAE
And this expert also believes that perhaps the RAE should accept someone from their profile as a member to adapt the use of language to technology.