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Another person familiar with the case said the incidents were, for a computer network, the equivalent of someone sneaking into a house and walking around but—apparently, so far—not taking or tampering with anything.

That's a really scary way of putting it, because if they're inside the house they can already take anything they want. I hope it's more like they jumped a fence and walked around the house peering through the windows.

I wonder if any country would have something to gain from a Market shutdown? Most major countries/continents now have one of their own stock exchanges, but what country can gain from this one going down? I could only assume China, but they are so reliant on the US dollar, they truly wouldn't want to see if fall. Maybe rogue hackers, but then again, most likely if they are a group, they are looking for something in the future.
A lot of them would be linked in ways you couldn't imagine. If they brought one stock market down, it would generally bring all stock markets down.

Especially if someone brought down NASDAQ, then confidence in all stock markets would be eroded, bringing them all down.

That is just one motive, which id agree would be rare its more likely someone with access would play with the figures for financial gain.

"Investigators are considering a range of possible motives, including unlawful financial gain, theft of trade secrets and a" terrorist.

They are not hackers. They are crackers.

Real hackers hang out on HN!

/edit: what's with the downvotes? wasn't it stated multiple times that the people who break into computer systems are not to be called "hackers" but "crackers"?

wasn't it stated multiple times that the people who break into computer systems are not to be called "hackers" but "crackers"?

Yes, here. But not in the Wall Street Journal. To everybody in the world bar a few hundred of us here, they are using the correct terminology. It's probably best to let it go.

Many would also argue that the majority of people that hang out here are not "hackers" but instead "developers that (mostly) know how to get shit done."

In their eyes, hacking is exploiting a weakness in a system to do something the system was not originally intended or designed to do.

But in the end, nobody cares.

> Many would also argue that the majority of people that hang out here are not "hackers" but instead "developers that (mostly) know how to get shit done."

yeah, but why is it called hacker news then?

It's not that simple. The earliest documented use of "hacker" actually did mean breaking into a (pre-computer) system. Sorry I don't have the citation handy and noprocrast (blessed be its name) is about to kick in on me. But it's been discussed here before.

So both uses of "hacker" can claim legitimacy. Perhaps that's as it should be. Maybe we shouldn't try to completely segregate the unauthorized from the creative. I'm tempted to say language knows best.

wasn't it stated multiple times that the people who break into computer systems are not to be called [...]

Stated by whom? This is the problem with the term "cracker". It's an artificial concoction (like "womyn") designed to make a point. That's why nobody uses it.

> Stated by whom?

I assumed it was community consensus to condemn the abuse of the word "hacker" by the media.

But maybe HN is too cognitive dissociated from the hacker community to have a productive discussion going on about this topic.