Mobsters, Taunters and More: The Four Kinds of Hackers

July 19, 2011 — -- "Hack" -- the word won't leave the headlines. Today Rupert Murdoch appeared in the British Parliament to answer questions about the phone hacking scandal roiling his news empire. Lulz Security, a hacking group, recently claimed to have broken into the websites of the CIA, the US Senate -- and Murdoch's own The Sun newspaper. And last month hackers stole more than $2.5M from Citibank and caused the bank to issue 100,000 replacement bank cards.

These events have highlighted an alarming trend: Hackers are evolving -- and they are organizing and uniting. They even have a Twitter account. Before the advent of the Internet, we called such hackers "robbers" or "criminals" or the "mafia." However, now that the Internet has provided a way to enter the front door through the digital underground, hacking has evolved into a disastrous enterprise.