Where do ethical hackers who attend engineering colleges find time to hack into someone's account?

First of all, thanks for the A2A. Second, apologies for answering this question so late. I decided to stop being a free loader on Quora and start contributing very recently. Now lets get to the answer! The term Hacker itself due to many reasons major one being mass media propogation is misunderstood. The term Hack originally was used for 2 meanings To cut To do something effciently albeit inelegantly or use something in a way it wasn't necessarily designed to be used. (mainly to do with computers and electronics) In case of any doubt refer to http://goo.gl/RwIxnF. It inherently did not mean to do something bad. The correct term that we should use today for the meaning we use 'Hack' for is 'Crack'. I think your question and description are not completely aligned and ask to address to different things. To answer your question as to how ethical hackers(students)find the time, Being an Engineering student, I'll be honest. I am not the most diligent student you'll find in my college but I know that even they have spare time to indulge in things that gets their brain cogs chugging. Hacking is not much different from learning a new language, learning to play Guitar or learning to dance. In short, its exhilarating. It brings excitement and the promise of creating/achieving something new. Another reason why so many guys are interested in it is because one of the most common characteristic in college students is that of a rebel. And Hacking seems to be a good way to vent that feeling. It gives them a feeling of freedom. If you follow a popular tech blog like The Hacker News, you'll find that Black Hat (malicious) hacking makes its rounds almost everyday in the tech world news. Whether it be GOP's attack on SONY Pictures or something else. It needs special skills and aptitude. Not every band is The Beatles or not every Tom, Dick or Harry becomes an orator like Martin Luther King Jr. And excellence in this field means Guru of computer systems and a knack for getting in people's head and guess how they think. It might actually prove helpful. The knight in the white, shining Armour is a good analogy for it :) Let me give you an example: I am not a hacker. Not by any extent of measure. Last year, one of my friends in the class (say X) had her Facebook account hacked. Random posts, messages, well, you can guess.We were sitting in one of our lab classes when she told me this. I wasn't paying close attention to the lecture(not very diligent, remember?) so started to play around. I GOT X's permission to try and recover her account.  (I think I'll write a blog about this!) Anyway, I got her email id (gmail) and tried to access that so that I could use the forgot password tool to regain access. That too was useless because apparently the hacker had changed the primary email address of the FB account. But we were able to get hold the new email address. So i tried to use forgot password on this email account. Then Google had started this new intelligent recovery system where instead of simply sending an email/SMS they asked you subjective questions about the account. Like when did you start using this and what Google/Android services have you installed,etc. Looking at the email id it was pretty apparent that it had been created specifically for the purpose of hacking X's FB account. So it was probable that it had been created recently. Also, that would mean that the hacker wouldn't use it for any other purpose. So I answered the question guesstimating the answers based on how a new email id would be like. And 2 minutes later Lo! and behold! I had access to the email account. I reset the password from Facebook. Changed the primary email address, deleted the old email address from the account, logged out off all current sessions everywehere and advised X to setup a very strong password next time. Also not to leave her FB account logged in on Pc, laptop which she did not have on her around the clock. I was able to do this without even being a real hacker. So you see Hacking in essence need not necessarily be evil. Its like having a pen. You could keep it pointing vertically upward when someone is about to sit and give them hell (has happened to me) or you could sign The Declaration of Independence with it. Upto you. Wow! This is getting long :) Talking shortly about the details you gave in the description, well, I agree with it for the most part that it is a punishable offence and laws regarding it have to be stringent. I am not so sure about capital punishment, or jumping off a cliff though. Thank again for the A2A!