[darksaints]

Hacker culture and cracker culture go hand in hand, and it has been that way since the very beginning of it all. Hacker culture primarily evolved from phreaking culture, which was reverse engineering and security bypassing...cracking, essentially. And for personal gain, no less. Nearly all of the famous hackers have histories of legally questionable actions.

And it should be that way. If you want any chance of knowing how to build good things, you need to know how to break them. That's as true for a bridge engineer as it is for Woz.

Personally, I find the attempt to distinguish between hacker and cracker to be some sort of no-true-scotsman retcon. I've always viewed the whole concept of hacker culture to be amoral...and the attempt to distinguish between "good" or "bad" hackers has just watered down the term.