[Paridel]

I think group #2 (script kiddies) and #3 (hackers) actually are a lot alike, at least in intent. The big difference being that the later knows what they are doing and that leaving traces means more opportunity to get caught, and the former doesn't.

I'm not really impressed with anyone that breaks into other people's machines, no matter what they do there. At school I had a couple friends and we would quite often break into each others machines and change the background, etc. It wasn't too difficult. My suitemate's debian box took me the longest to break into, because I never had physical access to it and it didn't run many services, but we eventually got that one too when he was a little too slow in updating packages, just took a couple months. Now this was all in good fun, with each others consent, and pretty strict ground rules (i.e. you didn't mess with a machines that had important school work on them, and the week a project was due you didn't mess with anything, and you made it really clear what you did). But it demonstrated to all of us that these "hackers" are really more persistent than smart.

-paridel

[antiRepublicrat]

I think group #2 (script kiddies) and #3 (hackers) actually are a lot alike, at least in intent.

Not really. What you described in school was hackers, people doing it for the challenge, the test of their skills (as well as being l33t in the eyes of their peers). Kiddies are just modern day vandals working with malice.