Let's come out and say it -- hacking is a bad thing in too many cases. Aside from being illegal, hackers tend to do damage to the systems they hack. But if you are interested in the challenge of breaking into systems, is there a way to do it legally and with an acceptable moral framework? Believe it or not, there is.

What you can do is get into a field with expanding job opportunities and rising salaries -- IT Security. Think of it as "ethical hacking", as you try to crash through the doors and windows of your employers system. Your job is not to do damage -- it is to find the holes in the system that would make it possible for the bad guys to do damage to the system. You aren't a vandal -- you are the first line of defense against those people.

Now how do you get trained for this? Well, one option is the online iClass option from the EC-Council. They offer coursework in Security Fundamentals, Ethical Hacking, Penetration Testing, Computer Forensics, Disaster Recovery, and Secure Programming to teach you how and what to do in an honest, above-board and legal manner so that you get paid for your work, not jailed for it.