The definition of hacker has changed radically over the years. With the aid of the mass media, the word has developed a negative connotation rather than the positive one it used to have. Add ethical in front of hacker, and it's even more confusing.
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For the purposes of this article, I'll define those hackers with malicious intent as "crackers." Hackers can be categorized into the following three buckets:
Hacktivists: Those who hack as a form of political activism.
Hobbyist hackers: Those who hack to learn, for fun or to share with other hobbyists.
Research and security hackers: Those concerned with discovering security vulnerabilities and writing the code fixes.