ResNet '99 Hacking gained national attention in such popular movies as Wargames and Sneakers . Although there may be some truth to these stereotypes, hackers are as diverse as any community. A hacker can be a technological genius halfway around the world, or it may be a college student living down the hall.
Some hackers break into computers to randomly destroy data, or for monetary gain.
However, the general reason given by most hackers is to exploit security flaws and to increase awareness that information security is not nearly as secure as many people assume it to be. Learning how to hack can be as simple as typing in a few words into an Internet search engine.