At the time, their computers were in fact named dasher, dancer, prancer, etc. At the University of San Diego, all our Macintoshes are named after long dead Popes. That Intel knew about this bug in their hardware for months previous made a lot of these researchers even more angry. Joshua Quittner, on Fresh Air with Nina Totenberg , National Public Radio, January 23, 1995. It was also excerpted in Wired , December 1994.
Crackers are hackers who 'crack' into computer systems, usually for evil purposes.
When 'hackers' break into computer systems, they're always doing it for the betterment of mankind, womankind, and computerkind.