You seem to confuse hacking with cracking (I blame the media for misinformation, not you). Hacking is more about creative solutions to problems not breaking into (unlawfully) computer systems and websites. Wikipedia offers a good (but incomplete) description of what a hacker does (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_%28hobbyist%29). Check this article by RMS (http://stallman.org/articles/on-hacking.html).