The meaning of the word ‘hacker’ in its original sense was, possibly, born in MIT in 60-s, long before computers got wide-spread. Then it was a part of the local slang and could mean a simple but rude solution of some problem, damned sly trick of students (the author was usually called a hacker). Up to that time words ‘hack’ and ‘hacker’ were used by various reasons irrelatively to computer technique in general.
A slang word ‘to hack’ (to cut, mangle) was originally born. It meant the process of making changes ‘on the fly’ in one’s own or another person’s program (it was supposed that original texts of the program were available). A verbal noun ‘hack’ meant the results of such change. It was quite useful and dignified not to just inform the author of the program about a mistake, but to offer him such a hack that would correct it. The word ‘hacker’ originally came from there.
Hack, however, did not always have a purpose of correcting mistakes, it could change the behaviour of the program contrary to the wish of its author. It is such scandalous incidents, primarily, that went public, and journalists were never interested in understanding of the hakishness as an active feedback between authors and users of programs. Then an epoch of the closed program code became, original texts of many programs got inaccessible, and a positive role of hackishness came to ought, enormous time consumption on the hack of the closed original code could be excused by a very strong motivation-such one as a wish to earn money or scandalous popularity.
As a result, a new, awry understanding of the word ‘hacker’ appeared: it means an intruder, using extensive computer knowledge to realize the unsanctioned, sometimes deleterious actions in the computer, namely, breaking computers, writing and wide-spread of computer viruses. First, the word ‘hacker’ in this sense was used by Clifford Stall in his book ‘An egg of a cuckoo’, and a Hollywood film ‘Hackers’ contributed to its popularity. The words ‘hack’, ‘to hack’ in such a computer slang are usually referred to breaking the protection of computer nets, web-servers and so on.