Black Hat Hacking is intended to be the same thing as Cracking. I'm glad the point was clear even if I didn't write that particular section. (I did rearrange the content though.) In common use there are three meanings of the word Hacker, and I was trying to cover all three. The press doesn't generally say Black Hat Hacker, they just say Hacker, but it is a common usage, and thus should be described. -- ksmathers
On the contrary, Black Hat, and White Hat are very commonly used terms among the security community. Here is a random [link] I just found. Execute a search on Google if you truly don't believe that the usage is commonplace.
I would also rather that people didn't use Hacker and Cracker interchangably. What is more I'd rather that it didn't rain on my Birthday. I can understand a certain idealistic attachment to keeping the meaning of the word secure to your own preferences, but I also have an idealistic streak. My idealistic streak is to represent without bias the actual way the world is. -- ksmathers I have recently heard of a new phrase amongst my students, (I am a computer science lecturer) which refers to hackers. It is "White Wig" hackers and refers to "Ethical hackers". The wig connection is to judges in courts of law.
def 1. fails to include hardware hackers. This should be be rewritten to be non-specific to software. (or maybe we can redefine software...)