It's important to remember that at the very core of a hacker, is a person who enjoys breaking the rules or bending them in their favor. At the same time as security professionals are writing programs to make you safer, hackers are working just as diligently looking for back doors and loopholes within these programs.

A good example is spam. Bill Gates, Microsoft's Chief Software Architect, predicted spam would be eliminated by 2006. Anyone checking their in-box lately can clearly see that is not quite the case. In fact, spam is on the rise. Spammers didn't just give up with the introduction of spam-blockers, instead they found creative ways to fool these programs. One method involves altering a few pixels in an image or adding a message to the image to make it appear unique.

Hackers aren't limited to conquering new security programs. In 2006, many hackers employed zero-day attacks to take advantage of program flaws that had yet to be reported. In response to these zero-day attacks, security researchers began two projects, the "Month of Kernel Bugs" and the "Month of Browser Bugs," to publicize new security flaws in web browsers and operating systems.

Whatever motivates today's hackers, whether it's money or the thrill, they don't appear to be leaving anytime soon