What motivates a hacker? Does the stereotypical concept of hackers as antisocial teens spending weekends on the net surfing for porn and trying to break into Windows boxes still fit?

vnunet.com puts these questions to a new group on the hacking scene. Less than a month old, World of Hell is indeed on a mission to create havoc for systems administrators everywhere, on any platform.

Although the group may only have existed since 12 March, it's already got defacements on such sites as BT, Compaq, Motorola and Kellogs under its belt, and makes no bones about the fact that members are defacing sites to get media attention.

World of Hell also takes pride in the fact that it doesn't just hit on NT boxes, confirming the belief that the hacking underground considers hackers that can only break into Windows as 'lame'.

"My nan could be hacking NT within 10 minutes of me teaching her - it is that easy," said one World of Hell member, Rubix. "Most NT defacers don't have the patience to read and learn - they want to be spoon-fed like babies. That is how poor NT security is."

But the hackers also have a heart. A trait of the group is to leave a link to the relevant security patch on the defaced page.

This is not to rub the admin's nose in it, but because they don't want "them to get shit off their employer. I'd hate for an admin to be fired because some lame Unicode kiddie like me defaced their box. The idea is the admin will update and restore before anyone else notices."

To get more of an insight into what it is to be a hacker, read vnunet.com's exclusive interview with World of Hell.