If you ask anyone that knows a few things about computers, just the basic things, about what a hacker is you will definitely get an answer. Not everyone has the same perception, but everyone has a slight idea in their mind of what a hacker is. Usually people fantasize a hacker to be someone that spends most of his time in front of a computer screen trying to break into various systems, and that person is usually someone who is very clever and rejected from society. Of course there are other people that fantasize a hacker to be someone very "cool", who has the power to shut down a server or break into a system and make fun of people. In some cases people are right and in some other cases the perception is wrong, but in most of the cases the hacker in the peoples mind is the person that the movies have introduced to us.
II. What is a Hacker.
So what is really a hacker and what does he/she do? The hackers have been out there "for a long time and the term hackers was given back in the 1950s to some people as a mask of respect for their skills" (Furnell, 2002). This term was referred to people that knew how to handle very well the different hardware and create the most complicated software. As the years passed and technology evolved the hackers changed. Today's hackers can be defined as people that possess extreme computer skills, people who enjoy learning different computer languages and learn them very fast, and also "people who would appreciate the work of other hackers" (http://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid14_gci212220,00.html). Some years ago, just before the internet was introduced to our lives, the hackers were supposed to be people that helped companies improve their security systems, but today hackers are both people that help companies fix their security systems, and people that enjoy breaking into systems. When someone is referring to a the term "Hacker" then he is talking about a person that invades into another computer without permission to steel documents, or to take revenge on something, or just for plain fun.