Hacking and cracking are commonly equated in the media but they aren't the same thing. Hackers are really the ultimate computer experts and they do a lot of good things for the sheer joy of doing them. Oh, and some of them like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs get rich doing them. Steve and Bill were a long way from their hacker roots by the time they made it big, tho.

Anyway, a cracker is someone who cracks secure systems for fun and maybe for profit. Even crackers are not always evil and are often just exploring and finding out what they can do. They may even send reports to people who should be responsible for security but may have left too easily exploitable holes.

The malicious hackers and crackers give everyone a bad name, as if anyone who knew how a bank worked was automatically assumed to be a bank robber.

Irresponsible hackers can cause problems without being malicious, some of the early viruses were written in fits of joy-hacking, just to see if it could be done.

Don't mistake the modern script-kiddy for a genuine hacker; hackers know what they are doing, script-kiddies simply have a set of tools they can use to cause mischief with. Juvenile self-gratification is often the motivation for the script-kiddy who zombies a public utility computer system to send out inane messages to anyone without a good spam filter.

It's still the wild, wild web out there but the owlhoots are really a minority and the guys in white hats are usually hackers, too.

Hugs,
Erin