"But seriously--anything you might consider "subversive hacking" is illegal."
What are you counting as "hacking"? Hacking together some encryption software to retain privacy from an intrusive government is subversive and, in many countries, legal.
What are you counting as "hacking"? Hacking together some encryption software to retain privacy from an intrusive government is subversive and, in many countries, legal.
My goal was actually to show (as you're rightly pointing out) that there are lots of cool security related hacks that one can do legally.
The poster, though, was asking about DDoS, form stuffing and otherwise "black hat" activities in relation to the law. You can't DDoS or exploit software on systems that you don't have permission to test, nor can you stuff forms to defraud advertisement providers like Adsense. Spamming email is illegal as well.
I'm not trying to argue the semantics of "hacker" and "cracker" and "script kiddie." Hacker News refers to hacker in its original sense, where as I perceive the poster to be asking about security related practices.