Many times we have come across newspaper articles and TV news where the word hacking or hacker is being portrayed as an illegal or malicious activity. Some people say that the media is responsible for this misinterpretation.

Whenever I or our community (local security and hacking community) come across people using hacking or hacker in negative sense, we always raised our voice stating that hacking is not illegal. It is all about understanding how systems work. I would like to have the input from EH-Net Community on this so that I can have better understanding and use it as a statistical reference during debates and discussions.

Kindly participate in the EH-Net Poll (this thread) and also the independent poll which is available here:

http://polls.linkedin.com/p/87847/emfrb
and
http://www.acepolls.com/polls/1121165-do-you-think-media-is-responsible-for-giving-hacking-a-negative-meaning

The medias job is to report news and if you haven't noticed within the last decade or two, news has to be sensational in order to grab attention so that news media agencies can create revenue.

If you saw the following two headlines, which do you think would be read first:

Malicious Cracker infiltrates banking network
Hackers hack into banking network

Its all a matter of interpretation. Many tech journalist know the differences in a hacker and a cracker but at the end of the day, its all semantics. Would you call Alberto Gonzalez a hacker or a cracker. At the end of the day, him as a cracker HACKED into TJX. Either way you cut it, none are truly wrong.

Let's take an alternative view of headline: "Marine Sniper Controls Attackers in Baghdad" versus "Marine Sniper Assasinates Attackers In Baghdad" or "Enhanced Interrogation" versus "Torture" It's all a matter of interpretation and the effect the media is seeking versus their intended audience. Do you blame the media? For what, their true underlying role is to create revenue via their reporting. It's an old argument that will never be corrected, there is no correction, there are opinions.