" Contrary to widespread myth, [ illegal Internet ] cracking does not usually involve some mysterious leap of hackerly brilliance, but rather persistence and the dogged repetition of a handful of fairly well-known tricks that exploit common weaknesses in the security of target systems. Accordingly, most crackers are only mediocre hackers ."
"...Though crackers often like to describe themselves as hackers, most true hackers consider them a separate and lower form of life, little better than virus writers. Ethical considerations aside, hackers figure that anyone who can't imagine a more interesting way to play with their computers than breaking into someone else's has to be pretty losing."
[The words above are adapted from the Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (FOLDOC) Copyright(C)1993,1997 by Denis Howe.
http://www.instantweb.com/~foldoc/ (U.S. mirror site). "Individual
definitions from this dictionary may be used without restriction provided no
more than twenty are used in any one work."]A hacker may be said to have cracked a problem of some kind and crackers are often said to have hacked into a system, but these verbs which often overlap in meaning should not be confused with the substantives! A hacker would be interested in many intellectually stimulating problems for the simple pleasure of obtaining the solution. This could involve the cracking of some code. Hackers often help others with technical difficulties, and might want to teach or write webpages in order to do so. In other words, they make positive contributions to society. Crackers appear to believe that their otherwise dreary existence is only made passible by breaking into systems and depriving other's of their rights, or even destroying their data. This is often done in order to get some kind of recognition from other crackers. There are some, of course, who are just ordinary criminals out to grab a buck — real losers in the cosmic journey of life.
When you read a news item about such topics, the context often makes it clear that the word cracker should have been used rather than hacker.