What it means
هک کردن (hek kardan) is the Persian compound verb for “to hack,” formed from the English loanword هک (hek, from “hack”) combined with the pure Persian light verb کردن (kardan, to do). It covers the same range as English: unauthorized access to a computer or account, bypassing a system’s restrictions, and, in the broader colloquial sense, finding a clever shortcut. The noun form هکر (heker) for “hacker” is equally common. There is no established pure Persian alternative in everyday use. The register is colloquial to neutral: people say it in both casual conversation and news reporting, though formal cybersecurity writing sometimes prefers نفوذ کردن (nofuz kardan), meaning “to penetrate” or “to intrude.”
How to use it
- اکانت اینستاگرامم رو هک کردن. (akânt-e instâgrâmam ro hek kardan.) “They hacked my Instagram account.”
- چطور میشه این سیستم رو هک کرد؟ (chetour mishe in sistem ro hek kard?) “How can this system be hacked?”
- هکر به اطلاعات کارت بانکیم دسترسی پیدا کرد. (heker be etelâ’ât-e kârt-e bânkim dastresi peydâ kard.) “The hacker got access to my bank card information.”
- این یه هک جالبه برای صرفهجویی تو وقت. (in ye hek-e jâlebe barâye sarfe-ju’i tu vaqt.) “This is a cool hack for saving time.”
Cultural note
In Iran, هک کردن carries an unusually broad cultural weight. The government’s filtering apparatus is itself often called a kind of hacking of the open internet by activists, while state media frames VPN use by citizens as a form of هک of censorship systems. At the same time, state-sponsored cyber operations attributed to Iranian groups have made the word a geopolitical term in international news. For ordinary Iranians, the most common context is personal: a hacked social media account or a leaked phone number, anxieties that are widespread given the surveillance environment.