If they're so incompetent that they're running on a poorly secured Windows 2000 box, they're probably not performing regular backups. Depending on how critical what they lost is, they may have little choice.
"Hackers"?
From an online tech rag too.
The message reads "you hacked", what would you call them?
It is probably time to give up on that word and learn from what happened for the future. Don't create cool words that the in-group calls themselves.
Yeah, there's no good alternative for the general public to use. "Cracking" is still ambiguous and never really caught on. Compare "Mr. Robot is a show about a hacker" to "Mr. Robot is a show about a cracker".
Ok I got butchered on the downvoting there but if that is the consensus then I would argue this site should be called "Maker News" or "Techie News" not "Hacker News" if we want the words Hacker/Hacking/Hack to imply taking control of computer systems you shouldn't for illegitimate purposes.