Several types of people—each with different skill sets—can be involved with a hack, and the term “hacker” can confusingly refer to all of them. First, there’s the creative hacker, who uses her curiosity and expertise to discover the hack and create the exploit. In the case of EternalBlue, it was a computer scientist at the NSA who discovered it. In the case of the Double Irish tax loophole, it was some international tax expert who painstakingly studied the different laws and how they interact. Second, there is the person who uses the resultant exploit in practice.
