I love this article solely for the Venn diagram.
This is exactly what hacking still means to everyone except the non-tech people. To be a hacker is to understand a thing in such a way or to such an extent that you can do things with it most people wouldn't think of doing, usually beyond the original intent of the thing.
The media, however, decided to use "hacker," because "hacker" sounds better than "cracker" -- and arguably less racist or sounding like something from Ritz.
Even then, not all of the people dubbed "hacker" by the media are actually or necessarily crackers in the sense that most people think of it. Kevin Mitnick, for example, was a social engineer and phreaker. The vast, vast majority of his black-hat work was done through tapping into the phone lines (phreaking), or simply manipulating people to get what he wanted to gain access to things (social engineering). Beyond that, the computer was just a way to access the systems he had already broken into.
White-hats don't get mentioned, because they've stopped things from happening, so there's nothing newsworthy (yes, it's a very thankless job). They're also not generally known as hackers at all by the general public, but rather "Chief Information Security Officer," "Security Analyst," "Penetration Tester" or any other security-related job title. It's thankless and unknown, but you can rake in some serious cash in that business.
