How do you hack

Hacking There are at least three common meanings for the term "hack" (not counting the one regarding trees). The least common is widely used only within the programming community, and simply means programming for fun. It is possibly an onomatopoeia referring to the sound of a programmer's fingers on a keyboard. This is the most common objection to the below most common usage, and has further evolved to denote the rapid and skillful production of code. Instructions for learning such a skill are impossible to give, beyond the standard advice to take classes, read manuals, and join online communities.

A slightly more common meaning is a legitimate activity similar to "jury-rig" and just means that you are reappropriating something to do that which it was not necessarily designed to do. A notable example is the LifeHacker blog. Within programming, this type of hacking is generally considered poor practice and again there is no real way to give a three-step process to learn it.

The most common meaning, which this question seems to refer to, involves discovering vulnerabilities in computer software. Within the hacker community there are two main "camps" of hackers, named after a convention of old-west films: black-hat (outlaw) and white-hat (lawman). Black-hat hackers are malicious programmers who exploit vulnerabilities for their own financial gain or amusement, while white-hat hackers disclose them to the appropriate software vendors so they may be patched. Black-hat hackers are also known as crackers, but the general public simply calls them hackers.

Black-hat hacking, or cracking, is an illegal act and can get you into some serious trouble - not only with the law but with viruses attached to supposed cracking tools and resources which will crack your computer and data. White-hat hacking, while not illegal, is essentially the same skill and should not be taught to just any random person who wishes to learn it.