I'm a former hacker. Therefore I'm always wary when I read an article about hackers. The word has a bad name but it shouldn't. Old school hackers were originally known for applying expertise and skill to getting the maximum benefit out of hardware and software. They were computer enthusiasts who were highly respected and their skills helped the software and hardware industries to advance very quickly in the early days of computing.
However, hackers in general quickly became associated with crime as some of them applied their considerable expertise to illegal activities. These people shouldn't be called hackers, but crackers. Within the IT-related Universities in the USA, there is currently a debate about the usage of the word hacker and there is a proposal that it should only be associated with its original expertise-oriented meaning.
10 Notorious Hackers of Our Time features some people that in my opinion are not real hackers. Like Kevin Mitnick who got famous because his punishment was excessive. But his primary method of obtaining information was 'social engineering,' the practice of obtaining confidential information by manipulating users.
Then there's Adrian Lamo, who's only real skill was 'exploiting misconfigured proxy servers.' He didn't even know what operating system the New York Times was running when he infiltrated it via proxy server.
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