The 1990's brought about massive changes in the way people saw and used technology, particularly computers. Hacking had become a kind of cult and the ubiquity of the Internet in people's lives allowed the pastime to expand in ever more insidious ways, and to arise from the most unusual corridors. The 1990's were also a time of high-profile Internet scams, frequently involving identity and credit card theft and finding and exploiting bugs in Microsoft and other software products. Hacking had become increasingly prevalent, making it more and more difficult to trace it. In his book, Hackers, Paul Taylor traces a growing intolerance of hackers as people became increasingly uneasy about technology and how to defend themselves from online attacks. While such hackers as Kevin Mitnick became heroes in the hacker underground, the general public saw him as representative of the criminal element in hackerdom, especially since he was charged with stealing 20,000 credit card numbers upon capture.

Many hackers, however, avoided credit card theft and used it only as a way to demonstrate a company's vulnerability. Credit card theft is generally considered by experienced hackers to be the quickest way to get caught. New hackers quite often entered the arena for reasons that had nothing to do with money. As Douglas Thomas points out, in the 1990's, "To the hacker, the computer begins to reveal itself as the means to realize our highest cultural values: independence, freedom and education" (76). Hacking had largely become the provenance of teenagers and had also gradually become less of an isolated activity. Hackers formed groups, had conventions, websites, magazines, and chat rooms. Many of the original motivations for hacking were the same. As Dan Verton notes in The Hacker Diaries: Confessions of Teenage Hackers, "Hacking was all about the pursuit of truth and not allowing one group of people to deny other groups access to the truth...The true crime was not hacking, but the reluctance of others to rip the veil from the sheep's eyes" (20). Not many people saw the heroism in hacking. As Adam Penenberg stated in an article in Forbes.com about, among other things, the plight of Kevin Mitnick, "Demons in the machine. Technology is terrifying, and the fear is directed at the Hacker". Taylor reinforces this notion as well: "Hackers serve to remind us of our technological vulnerability..." (1). Most people, however, do not want to be reminded of this.