Cyber Criminals

Cyber Criminals, (also known as Crackers) are the dark side of the hacking world and -unfortunately- the one most associated with the base term of a 'Hacker'.   According to Robert Moore in his book Cybercrime: Investigating High Technology Computer Crime(2005), a Cracker is "a hacker who violates computer security with malicious intent or for personal gain."  That definition makes a clear difference between an everyday hacker and a cracker already but it appears that it is a difference that is not clear to the public as almost half of the respondents considered them to be one and the same in terms of their threat level towards one's personal security.  A term I cam across while searching for information on this topic was that of a 'Black Hat Hacker' that lead me to discover an array of descriptors for Hackers by colored hats based on what they do.  

Crackers make people afraid because they can cause so many awful things to happen to someone.  Identity theft is something that everyone hears about and the results of it happening to someon have been somewhat demonized in the media as they have run various stories from people who have been it's targets and had a highly unpleasant mess made of their lives.  Considering how much more digital the world is becoming and how rapidly the changes are occurring fear of those with greater power in those new areas of cyberspace is a bit reminiscent of the fear many possessed of terrorists and terrorism after the 9/11 attacks on the United States, the only difference being that instead of a terrorist blowing up a building or bombing a public area these new criminals can destroy computers' software, steal information, even take down whole networks  from across the world while remaining almost undetectable.  

Further placing Crackers as a stereotype for most hackers is current pop culture that portrays them as vicious and uncaring of the suffering or harm they may cause in the course of the activities.  No matter how correct such portrayals may be, Crackers seem to be the most understood grouping of hackers based on the survey results and most people know that they should be worried about their computers being hacked by these people if anyone.