Hacking: Luck or skill???

Now over the years i have talked to a lot of people and have heard a lot of hacking tales ranging from the inexperienced to the elite.
Something has recently occured to me after hearing this 14 y.o telling me how he "hacked" his school network. Basically he said he found an open app on one of the computers which had a cached password. Ironically it happened to be the Admin password. With that he gained access to one of his teachers folders in which this teacher stored his ftp password. To cut a long story short he defaced his teachers web site. I believe he was "lucky".
Now on a higher scale what if a hacker were so stumble across a vulnerable server and use a simple exploit to gain complete control over a network. Is this skill?
If there is a difference between skill and luck? And where do we draw the line?

Now over the years i have talked to a lot of people and have heard a lot of hacking tales ranging from the inexperienced to the elite.
Something has recently occured to me after hearing this 14 y.o telling me how he "hacked" his school network. Basically he said he found an open app on one of the computers which had a cached password. Ironically it happened to be the Admin password. With that he gained access to one of his teachers folders in which this teacher stored his ftp password. To cut a long story short he defaced his teachers web site. I believe he was "lucky".
Now on a higher scale what if a hacker were so stumble across a vulnerable server and use a simple exploit to gain complete control over a network. Is this skill?
If there is a difference between skill and luck? And where do we draw the line?

allow me to analogize,

when the 14yo finds where you add new weapons to the Quake source code, or change health or damage, he is in a sence, lucky.

John Romero on the other hand knows C, and has been staring at the code for Quake for so long that he can probably visualise the segments of code being executed as the game loads or plays.

allow me to analogize,

when the 14yo finds where you add new weapons to the Quake source code, or change health or damage, he is in a sence, lucky.

John Romero on the other hand knows C, and has been staring at the code for Quake for so long that he can probably visualise the segments of code being executed as the game loads or plays.

The kid, depending on personal opinion, can be classified as a lamer or cracker. Since no real work was involved, I would say he's a lamer. True acquired skills, such as programming or exploiting software/OS's, involve very little luck. Sure, a lazy or unexperienced administrator can make the job easier for a hacker, but depending on the knowledge of the supposed hacker and his/her intent, usually little luck is involved. One other thing, usually people who have the knowledge to exploit software/OS's are making good money in the computer field and have better things to do than become a black-hat hacker. It's late and I don't know if this makes any sense; I can't put into words what I'm thinking. Let me know if you would like any clarification.

The kid, depending on personal opinion, can be classified as a lamer or cracker. Since no real work was involved, I would say he's a lamer. True acquired skills, such as programming or exploiting software/OS's, involve very little luck. Sure, a lazy or unexperienced administrator can make the job easier for a hacker, but depending on the knowledge of the supposed hacker and his/her intent, usually little luck is involved. One other thing, usually people who have the knowledge to exploit software/OS's are making good money in the computer field and have better things to do than become a black-hat hacker. It's late and I don't know if this makes any sense; I can't put into words what I'm thinking. Let me know if you would like any clarification.

My opinion?


To hack a random system just to say you did it is luck.
To hack a specific system to determine its weaknesses is skill.

IOW, luck won't make you any money.

My opinion?


To hack a random system just to say you did it is luck.
To hack a specific system to determine its weaknesses is skill.

IOW, luck won't make you any money.

well xid is what your trying to say that u turn from lucky to skillful by having knowledge?

well xid is what your trying to say that u turn from lucky to skillful by having knowledge?