MSD wroteMoreover, I don't feel using the word "hacker" as in "professional hacker" is adequate. A hacker (according to at least one definition) is: "[a] person who delights in having an intimate understanding of the internal workings of a system, computers and computer networks in particular.", so security and network hacking is one part of it, for example people who bothered enough to hack PS3 and make it run Linux are still hackers.
I am being a bit picky about terminology because this term is misused many times and I suppose "we" would know better.
My 2 cents, no picking-on intended.
Not really, you can't compare a hacker that can comprimise a system to a hacker that comprimise another PC on his network. Some might be beginners, some are good and some are professionals. Same apply to programming, beginner programer, good programer and professional programmer.
I, myself, am very good in the topics i posted, i hacked couple of sites ( i know it's unethical, but really you need to hack to learn how to secure later. It's quite in the ild days, i'm turning to the ethical side) and i can do a lot more but still i do not count my self as a professional for 1 simple reason, i don't code my own exploits even thought i find a lot of bugs and vulnerabilty, i give them to my team mates in my group so they can work on an exploit. I don't code my exploits because i'm still not a professional in Assembly Language, i still need a year to become a pro hacker.
I just gave you an example of myself to show you that terms matter. btw you're right about the misuse of the term hacker because a person just memorizing some code and using it when necessary like memorizing the commands to crack a wep password, without knowing notthing about networking, how IEEE 802.11 works, how wep/wpa encryption works and how each attack works. Some might just do this and go ahead amd start calling himself as a hacker. ( the only reason i gave you this example is because Wep cracking tutorial became one of the most tutorials available online. I know alot of people that can do this and when another person ask him how do you do it ? he simply says i'm a hacker. In reality he's a newb or a Skid )
That's the reasons i prefer differentiating between Skid, Novice, Good and Professional Hacker.