Here's how a great deal of hacking works: people write programs or scripts that tell a computer to guess password and user name combinations at prompts. A computer can guess a lot faster than an average person can type, up to a few billion guesses every second.
Eventually, the guessing computer will get the password right, if given enough time. Fortunately, complex passwords take a lot of time to guess.
We live in a modern age, where free and easily downloaded firewalls, anti-viruses and anti-spyware programs can render 99% of all hacking attempts obsolete. But somethings, probably considered hacks, are still all too easy to learn and use.
For instance, this article details how to crash interwebs explorer. There, Now you know how to hack. You can't turn me in now, you're in too deep already!
The history of hacking is a wide and varied one, taking place all over the world. Feel free to peruse the map below, showing the locations of some of the biggest hacking events in interwebs history.
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And I totally lied about penguin hackers.
Diving Deeper -
http://www.sptimes.com/Hackers/history.hacking.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_computer_security_hacker_history
http://www.francesfarmersrevenge.com/stuff/misc/hack/index.htm
http://www.crime-research.org/library/crime1.htm
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/19/AR2010021902643.html?hpid=moreheadlines
http://blogs.zdnet.com/security/?p=1670
http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/europe/08/02/british.hacker.mckinnon/index.html
http://www.geek.com/articles/news/japanese-hacker-arrests-doubled-in-2007-20081111/
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_sof_pir_rat-crime-software-piracy-rate
