I've been a hacker since at least 1986 and have no use for the commonly accepted definitions. First of all, no self-respecting hacker in those years at least would have broken into any system unless they had been asked to do so by its owner or owners to locate and fix security problems. Hackers in the year I considered myself one and knew others far better than myself and was able to recognize them for what and who they were were people who managed to make their machines and software do several undocumented things in order to help themselves out or to help their employers out. Basically envelope pushers. That's what distinguished them from users. What we have today are actually three classes of cybercrackers. Lowest on the brains ladder are the script kitties, then we have the real professionals. Those fall into cybercrackers who break into systems and leave notes so security exploits they used can be terminated, white hats if you prefer. Then there are the cyber punks the black hats if you prefer. All of this virus stuff became public because a Bell Labs employee whose first name was Dominic broke his word and published material on what started out as the game core wars over at bell labs and the core warriors the programmers wrote over there to play the game. Those of us who were the original computer hackers I'm sure resent the abuse of our good name which in those years long ago we wore as a badge of honor.