If I myself had to come up with a definition of what a hacker is I would say a person, or maybe even a computer program, whose goal is to corrupt someone’s computer. This could be anything from viruses to a person who wants to get inside a company’s computer system in order to gain information or just to cause some chaos and destruction. I think this is a good assumption, I’m not exactly a computer expert, far from it, but I would say I am computer savvy.
It is my experiences with computers that lead me to believe this, however if I believed in the media and what they consider hackers I would really be lead to believe hacking was “exciting”, if not completely wrong. There have been countless movies that portray hackers as sophisticated people, who could enter into computers to steal money amongst other things. Often movies portray hacking as a videogame, like it’s that easy. I think it’s obvious that movies have screwed up the image of hackers by far, for example why is the same character that played Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) in X-men believable as a hacker in the horrible movie Swordfish? The only “hacking” that I myself have been a part of has been possibly changing a status update or two on a friend’s Facebook when they left their computer up, I guess that didn’t really involve me finding out someone’s password or anything.
