I'd start with the following, and refine if necessary:

"Gaining unauthorized access to a protected computer resource by technical means."

• Port scanning --> Not hacking because there isn't any access to resources gained*
• Using default passwords that weren't changed --> Not hacking because the resource wasn't protected*
• Sending spam --> Not hacking because there isn't any access to resources gained
• Beating the admin with a wrench until he tells you the key --> Not hacking because it's not by technical means.
• Accessing teacher SSN's published on the state website in the HTML --> Not hacking because the resource wasn't protected, and on the contrary was actively published**
• Distributed denial of service attack --> Not hacking because there isn't any access to resources gained

* Those first two actually happened in 2001 here in Switzerland when the WEF visitors list was on a database server with default password, they had to let a guy (David S.) go free
** The governor and his idiot troupe eventually stopped their grandstanding and didn't file charges against Josh Renaud of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter, luckily

The Mastodon developers then formally requested that Truth Social comply with the terms of the software license,[75] with Truth Social publishing its source code as a ZIP file on the website on November 12, 2021.

Lol they actually complied with the license in the end, i didnt know that.

Iran pls hack Elon Musk's Twitter account and post "I'm a mean old Nazi who sucks ass at Path of Exile 2"

I'm still at a loss for words thinking that any real human people joined truth social. We really failed as a species...

they have to start differentiating a ddos attack from an actual breach. one is far more interesting than the other

I'd start with the following, and refine if necessary:

"Gaining unauthorized access to a protected computer resource by technical means."

• Port scanning --> Not hacking because there isn't any access to resources gained*
• Using default passwords that weren't changed --> Not hacking because the resource wasn't protected*
• Sending spam --> Not hacking because there isn't any access to resources gained
• Beating the admin with a wrench until he tells you the key --> Not hacking because it's not by technical means.
• Accessing teacher SSN's published on the state website in the HTML --> Not hacking because the resource wasn't protected, and on the contrary was actively published**
• Distributed denial of service attack --> Not hacking because there isn't any access to resources gained

* Those first two actually happened in 2001 here in Switzerland when the WEF visitors list was on a database server with default password, they had to let a guy (David S.) go free
** The governor and his idiot troupe eventually stopped their grandstanding and didn't file charges against Josh Renaud of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter, luckily

Iran pls hack Elon Musk's Twitter account and post "I'm a mean old Nazi who sucks ass at Path of Exile 2"

Oh man.

My comment was intended to imply that the term "hacking" defies definition because it has been grossly overused and misconstrued over many decades.

Sure you might be able to convey what it means to you but of course it means different things to everyone else, with each definition being equally appropriate.

Er go, any discussion is one of semantics.

When my parents kicked me out, the number of times o got to sleep inside because i could convince people i was the county password inspector was more than zero. It's hacking.

Wrench? No. But an old colleague informs me that the version done with a machete does count as hacking. I concur.

Those are both way more useful than exploiting a lazy coder's fuckup, renaming 'house of many backdoors' to 'that package everyone uses in everything' on github, or some fancy math shit.

Your laws are nonsense bullshit, they're just excuses for power and I'd appreciate you not defiling language fof the rest of us to justify them.

Those are both way more useful than exploiting a lazy coder’s fuckup

I never said social engineering, physical breaching, exerting force on people, and other ways of compromising systems weren't useful. They just aren't hacking to me, otherwise the term is too broad to be very useful.

You're free to come up with your own definition, I was asked to define it and that's my best shot for now.

I think a better definition would be "achieve something in an unintended or uncommon way". Fits the bill on what generally passes in the tech community as a "hack" while also covering some normal life stuff.

Getting a cheaper flight booked by using a IP address assigned to a different geographical location? Sure I'd call that a life hack. Getting a cheaper flight by booking a late night, early morning flight? No, those are deliberately cheaper

Also re: your other comment about not making a reply at all, sometimes for people like us it's just better to not get into internet fights over semantics (no matter how much fun they can be)

DDoS is not hacking

You know my first instinct wast to reply with: "No."

Maybe I should have stuck with that. I had a feeling this would lead nowhere.

You say this like the hour all major SAAS went down 2 weeks ago was nothing. MILLIONS lost in business hours is not nothing.

It's been tried. A huge percentage of the internet runs on Amazon web services... And a massive ddos attack on that barely bumped it beyond the level of holiday shopping.

To get anywhere on "taking down the internet" they'd probably have to physically take out many sites across the globe.

DDoS is not hacking

The word "hack" is pre-internet. A "hack" journalist or a "hack job" is basically something unprofessional. It is movies that turned "hackers" into someone that gained access to the "mainframe". In the realm of computer systems, I would argue that a "hack" is doing anything the system was not intended/designed to do. A successful DoS or DDoS needs to find some component of the system that wasn't designed to handle the amount of traffic about to be sent to it.

There are protections for DDoS (iptables, fail2ban, Cloudflare and so on), you have to figure out a way around them, that's a hack.

Who gives a fuck about the travails of corporations on the internet?

The entire capitalist world only cares about that.