Yeah I understand the difference between the two which is why I mentioned them. Moving back to the non-malicious meaning seems like a moot point. The layperson

Yeah I understand the difference between the two which is why I mentioned them. Moving back to the non-malicious meaning seems like a moot point. The layperson doesn't care about the difference only the outcome. Which in most cases is they don't know you or have a business relationship with you and you are now accessing their system. If I was working within the pentester / security researcher space I would not be doing any work outside the bounds of an explicit contract/bug bounty program, etc as any access gained would be illegal access regardless of your "supposed" intentions. In my original comment I was looking for the OP to expand upon: "I have never in my life heard that hack comes with malicious intent" as that seemed odd given the books, movies and legal cases.