The word hacker has a chequered past. Originally the word meant an extreme programmer.

Hackers are very sharp people with a deeper understanding of how computers work and can write programs that do things theyre not supposed to. Programmers make computers compute, hackers make a computer sing, dance and fly - or crash. Hacking abilities are often used for internet vigilantism. Hackers may be motivated by multiple reasons, such as profit, protest, or challenge. Over the years the hackers have found, invented, perfected and finessed a whole slew of innovative tricks to fool the protections built into the computer operating systems. Before the days of the Internet, the viruses lived on diskettes. Today, virus writing has become really sophisticated. Some hacking methods cause minor problems to computer users, probably due to various anti-virus software, but then there are those that cause damages worth millions of dollars to certain corporations, infusing chaos into a network, pulling down systems, putting confidential information into jeopardy. Such example is the infamous organisation Anonymous group. On the other hand, there are subtle class differences that the general public is not
aware of. There are hackers who break into systems that dont necessarily destroy them,

They are the pioneers in this electronic frontier. They are seeing the dangers, the vulnerabilities, the unethical, inappropriate business behaviour by communications and computing companies.
who have the publics best interest at heart. These cyber security experts look for flaws in the system, and repair them before the bad guys can exploit them.

Hacking is about exploring, going where no one else has gone before, finding new corners in cyberspace, pushing the edge of the envelope. The bottom line is they are just way out in front of the world.