Within the realm of blackhat or malicious hacking, many people may also make a distinction between cheating a corporation out of small amounts of money (phone p

Within the realm of blackhat or malicious hacking, many people may also make a distinction between cheating a corporation out of small amounts of money (phone phreaking, cable boxes) and doing things that directly hurt private individuals for the sake of profit. So even if the earliest uses of “hacking” referred to something illegal, it might not really refer to the same thing as blackhat hacking today.