What makes someone a hacker?

Considering most of today's computer hacking is automated, it poses such a danger to Internet security. Some hackers remain highly educated technical specialists, while others are far less known and may launch effective assaults simply by purchasing attack tools.

• Hacker motivations include financial gain, activism, business espionage (spying on competitors), state-sponsored assaults against competing nation-states, and even cyber terrorism.
• Hacker demographics used to be that hackers were generally youths looking to achieve recognition by breaking into large corporations. However, today's hacker community is significantly more varied and composed of people with a wide range of motivations.