Since someone is due to come in here and have a fit soon, I’m going to specify in advance of my post that the word “hacker” means “malicious hacker” in this post.
I kinda qualify as a “person who could have been evil, but did not end up that way”. At least with respect to computers. Regardless of the libel written in Livejournals about me, I am neither “evil”, nor a “dumbfuck”.
At one time I could have been a “malicious hacker”. I knew how to write virii, and I had a working Excel Macro function that could have been a malicious virus before I ever heard of one that was released on purpose to cause trouble.
I also knew a large bit of hardware-level programming too. And because of a special assignment I had early on, I knew a few tricks about one brand of ATM machine that could have been seriously tempting.
But I didn’t do any harm with my knowledge. Why? Because I’m not sick and disgusting sociopath or psychopath who enjoys such things as hurting or harassing people, trying to repeatedly access places where they are absolutely not wanted or forbidden, or making people’s lives difficult.
A person I’ve known IRL for more than 15 years is a “true” computer genius. This person is a person who can figure out anything, and is at the level where the only thing keeping them from writing entire operating systems from scratch is lack of time. They have written entire networking protocols from scratch over a long weekend, doing impossible things with PCs and hardware that amazed the vendors themselves. They also have shown an uncanny ability to guess people’s passwords, just by what they know about them. It’s almost like a magician’s act.
They are also an extremely quiet, keep-to-themselves type of person that no one would really suspect would do any harm at all. This sort of person could be planning the end-of-the World nuclear missile silo hacking thing, and no one would ever know.
From the circles I’ve been in, the best and most elite hackers (malicious or otherwise) are the ones you would never suspect. They are discreet in all things, online and off. There is a group of these people who are very public, and who live to be “Net Celebrities.” I guess it’s like people on this Board who get a swelled head over being…umm…“popular”, I guess. But in the end, it’s the old “My Mom says I’m the coolest Dungeon Master on the block!” type of thing. Those that brag about it are are not elite.