Too merciful, some hackers love imposing a "living death" on people they disagree with, ruining their credit, reputation, privacy, etc. Hacking should be a capital offense and all cruel and unnusual punishment prohibitions should be suspended. I hate hackers, I don't tend to hate as a rule but actually hate hackers.
Hacking is a general purpose term, it can be anything from an individual computer breach , to a minor software change to a widespread network attack. The common factor is not having the permissions to enter the systems and causing some form of damage. The problem is the hackers have technical knowledge but not a whole lot of social skills so they tend to be the rebel without a clue types.
There are some professionals that hack, most of them are bored kids and college undergrads. I've known quite of few of the latter and very few of the former.
There is never an excuse to compromise someone else's computer, I don't care what the intent is.
First off, violating another person's CPU or their security is a federal crime, secondly even with benign intent if someone doesn't know what they are doing or is "experimenting" and ****s up a setting in the Boot sector or registry entry they can do permanent damage to someone else's property even accidentally.
You're correct, but they both are federal crimes.
Stealing credit card numbers and using them to "give" money to pet projects, crashing U.S. security, hacking people's game systems and taking information, etc. are not entertaining, it is data theft, some of it is I.D. theft which is one of the worst crimes perpetrated in the U.S. in terms of damage. That is not entertainment it is malicious criminal activity.
They are all criminals and should be punished harshly.
